trial.md

Software Quality Engineering

Testing, Quality Assurance, and Quantiable Improvement

Tian Siyuan tiansiyuan@gmail.com

Overview

• Meeting People’s Quality Expectations

• Book Organization/Overview/Usage

• Pre-requisite Knowledge

General Expectations

• General expectation:

  "good" software quality

• Objects of our study: software

  • software products, systems, and services

  • stand-alone to embedded

  • software-intensive systems

  • wide variety, but focus on software

• Quality (and how "good") formally defined

Quality Expectations

• People: Consumers vs producers

-	quality expectations by consumers

-	to be satisfied by producers through software quality engineering (SQE)

• Deliver software system

-	does what it is supposed to do

	needs to be "validated"

-	does the things correctly

	needs to be "verified"

-	show/demonstrate/prove it ("does")

	modeling/analysis needed

Meeting Quality Expectations

• Difficulties in achieving good quality:

-	size: MLOC products common
-	complexity
-	environmental stress/constraints
-	flexibility/adaptability expected

• Other difficulties/factors:

-	product type

-	cost and market conditions

-	addressed later (especially Part III)

• "no silver bullet", but SQE (software quality engineering) helps

SQE as an Answer

• Major SQE activities:

-	Testing: remove defect & ensure quality

-	Other QA alternatives to testing

-	How do you know: analysis & modeling

• Scope and content hierarchy

![](./SQE-hierarchy.png)

-	Software quality engineering

-	Quality assurance

-	Testing

Contents

• QA alternatives/SQE activities:

• Overview and Basics (Part I)

• QA alternatives:

-	Testing (Part II)
-	Other alternatives (Part III)
-	Overall comparison

• Analysis and improvement (Part IV)

-	overall mechanism

-	measurements/models

-	specific analyses/models

• Testing (Part II):

-	all topics, but focus on techniques

-	overview and general questions

-	important common issues

	activities/management/automation

-	testing techniques

-	specialization and integration

• Testing techniques

-	organized by underlying models:

	lists and partitions
	
	finite-state machines

-	both black-box and white-box views

-	both coverage goals and usage/reliability goals

• Other alternatives (Part III):

-	defect prevention

-	inspection, review, analysis

-	formal verification

-	defect containment

-	comparison, including testing

• Comparing different QA alternative

-	applicability and effectiveness

-	dealing with quality problems/defects:

	prevention/removal/tolerance

-	cost

-	overall comparison

Pre-requisite

• Math/statistics:

-	discrete math, logic, graph, etc.

-	probability and statistics

-	used in modeling/analysis.

• Background knowledge in CS/SE:

-	computer systems and programming

-	fundamentals of computing

-	general SE knowledge and experience