Quality Measure

In order to initiate the Frequent Shopper Program three important steps must be taken. Quality assurance process and procedures to ensure the functionality and performance requirements are met second, testing procedures to ensure the application is operational at all levels this includes programming networking, systems and interfaces third, implementation steps and procedures necessary to achieve operational status.

This paper is to maintain and produce a product that is high level quality which will be a critical factor in the production of a successful software system and will remain so during the entire project. Software Development Life Cycle comprises Software Requirement Analysis, System Analysis and Design, Code Generation, Testing, Maintenance and Quality Assurance. Our Quality Assurance process is a part of Software Development Life Cycle. (Rainbow, 2008) (Rainbow, 2008) Quality assurance is not a one man job it takes a team to make sure everything is done correctly.

An organizational structure of the quality team will be developed. Once a team has been created policies will be designed in order to provide structure where positions, roles, responsibility will be created in order for a positive operation and organization. This will establish a chain of command in order to make the objective affective. Effective method for monitoring quality assurance because it analyzes existing conditions and methods used to provide the product or service customers. The goal is to ensure that excellence is inherent in every component of the process.

Quality assurance also helps determine whether the steps used to provide the product or services are appropriate for the time and conditions. (Wise Geek, 2011) Second will be defining a quality assurance process, the quality assurance manager (Todd Albright) for Kudler Frequent Shopper Program will be responsible for overseeing all three Kudler Locations and each QA member will be assigned to a specific location and the QA tasks and will be referred to as external while the individual quality of work will be known as external.

The external quality assurance tasks will include the following; maintaining the QA documents, ensures verification occurs and is logged, preparation for attendance of all inspections, inspect any audits, post unit testing, the development team is provided input from the activities of the QA, and the software engineering team are assigned any defects repair. The external team will be responsible for their individual work and maintaining their own databases and unit testing including metrics. Metrics are numerical measures that quantify the degree to which software or a process possesses a given attribute.

Examples of metrics are ‘‘defects per thousand lines of code’’ and ‘‘average software module size. ’’ Metrics are collected and analyzed throughout the software life cycle, and help with the following: Determining software quality level Estimating project schedules Tracking schedule progress Determining software size and complexity (University of Phoenix 2010) Documentation will also be produced during the project this will consist of any software design documents, test documents, verification and validation plans and software configuration plans.

Todd Albright who has been assigned as the QA manger will overlook the QA organization team members and will be able to approve any quality assurance function performed. Todd Albright will also ensure that coding standards will meet guidelines which will be no more than 2 defects per every 1000 lines and to ensure meetings, audits, reviews will be conducted twice a month to ensure the quality of the software. In addition to provide quality processes the QA teams will provide independent testing while educating the engineers for internal quality and will work closely with the project managers to ensure a successful development.

The final goal for quality assurance will be to have no critical or any serious defects, the design will have no more than one defect a diagram, the code will consists of less than two defects per 1000 lines of non commented coding. To ensure the software is working four different types of testing will be done; unit testing, integration testing, system testing and use integration testing. Unit testing will be conducted by the programmers who developed the code of the program making sure there are no errors this will help determine to see if the software is doing what is meant for.

Unit testing provides some undeniable advantages. It allows for automation of the testing process, reduces difficulties of discovering errors contained in more complex pieces of the application, and test coverage is often enhanced because attention is given to each unit. (MSDN, 2011) The next step in testing the Frequent Shopper program is the integration testing, this will test two different units that have already passed the unit testing to see if they will work together. The approach that will be used will be the top-down approach which requires the highest level modules be tested first.

This will ensure a high data flow and be tested early in the process rigorously this way it meets the quality standards.. The third step that will be conducted is the system test which will be conducted by the testing team it will cover any cases and scenarios, the technical requirements, specifications and making sure it meets the business and functional requirements. System Testing is a crucial step in Quality Management Process. * In the Software Development Life cycle System Testing is the first level where The System is tested as a whole The System is tested to verify if it meets the functional and technical requirements *The application/System is tested in an environment that closely resembles the production environment where the application will be finally deployed *The System Testing enables us to test, verify and validate both the Business requirements as well as the Application Architecture (Exforsys Inc, 2011) Once final testing has started the final stage can be conducted which is implementing the project into plan.

The maintenance team will correct any errors during the implementation phase and provide user end support if needed during the implantation phase, the program will be reviewed by the QA manager making sure all the objectives for the project plan have been implemented, and are running as they should be.