V. Suma

V. Suma, T. R. Gopalakrishnan Nair

Software is a unique entity that has laid a strong impact on all other fields either related or not related to software. These include medical, scientific, business, educational, defence, transport, telecommunication to name a few. State-of-the-art professional domain activities demands the development of high quality software. High quality software attributes to a defect-free product, which is competent of producing predictable results and remains deliverable within time and cost constraints. It should be manageable with minimum interferences. It should also be maintainable, dependable, understandable and efficient. Thus, a systematic approach towards high quality software development is required due to increased competitiveness in today's business world, technological advances, hardware complexity and frequently changing business requirements.

U. S. Poornima, V. Suma

In recent years, Software has become an indispensable part of every segment from simple Office Automation to Space Technology and E-mail to E-commerce. The evolution in Software architecture is always an open issue for researchers to address complex systems with numerous domain-specific requirements. Success of a system is based on quality outcome of every stage of development with proper measuring techniques. Metrics are measures of Process, Product and People (P3) who are involved in the development process, acts as quality indicators reflecting the maturity level of the company. Several process metrics has been defined and practiced to measure the software deliverables comprising of requirement analysis through maintenance. Metrics at each stage has its own significance to increase the quality of the milestones and hence the quality of end product. This paper highlights the significance of software quality metrics followed at major phases of software development namely requirement, design and implementation. This paper thereby aims to bring awareness towards existing metrics and leads towards enhancement of them in order to reflect continuous process improvement in the company for their sustainability in the market.

T. R. Gopalakrishnan Nair, V. Suma, Pranesh Kumar Tiwari

One of the prerequisites of any organization is an unvarying sustainability in the dynamic and competitive industrial environment. Development of high quality software is therefore an inevitable constraint of any software industry. Defect management being one of the highly influencing factors for the production of high quality software, it is obligatory for the software organizations to orient them towards effective defect management. Since, the time of software evolution, testing is deemed a promising technique of defect management in all IT industries. This paper provides an empirical investigation of several projects through a case study comprising of four software companies having various production capabilities. The aim of this investigation is to analyze the efficiency of test team during software development process. The study indicates very low-test efficiency at requirements analysis phase and even lesser test efficiency at design phase of software development. Subsequently, the study calls for a strong need to improve testing approaches using techniques such as dynamic testing of design solutions in lieu of static testing of design document. Dynamic testing techniques enhance the ability of detection and elimination of design flaws right at the inception phase and thereby reduce the cost and time of rework. It further improves productivity, quality and sustainability of software industry.

T. R. Gopalakrishnan Nair, V. Suma, N. R. Shashi Kumar

Defect estimation and prediction are some of the main modulating factors for the success of software projects in any software industry. Maturity and competency of a project manager in efficient prediction and estimation of resource capabilities are one of the strategic driving forces towards the generation of high quality software. Currently, there are no estimation techniques developed through empirical analysis to evaluate the decision capability of a project manager towards resource allocation for effective defect management. This paper brings out an empirical study carried out in a product based software organization. Our deep investigation on several projects throws light on the impact of decision capability of project manager towards accomplishment of an aforementioned objective. The paper enables project managers to gain further awareness towards the significance of predictive positioning in resource allocation in order to develop high quality defect-free software products. It also enhances the maturity level of the company and its persistence in the competitive atmosphere.