Cost of Quality

Cost of Quality

Cost of Quality: This includes all the costs needed to achieve the required Quality   levels. It includes prevention costs, appraisal costs and failure costs. d. Other tools: There   are various other tools used in the Planning process such as Cause and Effect Diagrams,  System Flow Charts, Cost Benefit Analysis, etc. All these help us to create a Quality   Management  Plan  for  the  project.  2)  Quality  Assurance  :  The  Input  to  the  Quality   Assurance Processes is the Quality Plan created during Planning. Quality Audits and  various other techniques are used to evaluate the performance of the project. This helps  us to ensure that the Project is following the Quality Management Plan. The tools and   techniques used in the Planning Process such as Design of Experiments, Cause and Effect  Diagrams may also be used here, as required. 3) Quality Control : Following are the   inputs to the Quality Control Process: - Quality Management Plan. - Quality Standards   defined for the Project - Actual Observations and Measurements of the Work done or in   Progress The Quality Control Processes use various tools to study the Work done. If the   Work done is found unsatisfactory it may be sent back to the development team for fixes.   Changes to the Development process may be done if necessary. If the work done meets    the  standards  defined  then  the  work  done  is  accepted  and  released  to  the  clients.  Importance of Documentation: In all the Quality Management Processes special emphasis   is put on documentation. Many software shops fail to document the project at various  levels. Consider a scenario where the Requirements of the Software Project are not   sufficiently documented. In this case it is quiet possible that the client has a set of expectations and the tester may_‖ not know about them. Hence the testing team would not

be able test the software developed for these expectations or requirements. This may lead to poor ―Software Quality as the product does not meet the expectations. Similarly

consider a scenario where the development team does not document the installation instructions. If a different person or a team is responsible for future installations they may end up making mistakes during installation, thereby failing to deliver as promised. Once again consider a scenario where a tester fails to document the test results after executing the test cases. This may lead to confusion later. If there were an error, we would not be sure at what stage the error was introduced in the software at a component level or when integrating it with another component or due to environment on a particular server etc. Hence documentation is the key for future analysis and all Quality Management efforts. Steps: In a typical Software Development Life Cycle the following steps are necessary for Quality Management:

1) Document the Requirements 2) Define and Document Quality Standards 3) Define and Document the Scope of Work.