CS302: Software Engineering (2021.B.01)

Many IS professionals, when asked what they understand by software quality, immediately start to talk about testing. When they realise that they are limiting their understanding they include validation and verification into the formula and begin to talk about walkthroughs and reviews which are just an extension of testing. So testing is their major understanding of quality. There is a simple explanation why this is so. There is an abundance of text books with titles related to software quality. However, closer examination reveals that the vast majority of them are concerned with quality assurance and for most authors that means testing developed code with some references to validation and verification. Perhaps this preoccupation on quality assurance stems from the international standard (ISO 9000-3 1991) where the expression quality assurance forms part of its heading and then contains a substantial emphasis on guidelines for testing, validating and verifying developed product. Quality and what it means is not defined and even someone familiar with its meaning would find it difficult to locate references to it in the standard and guidelines.