An Approach to Measure the Quality of Software using Lightweight Processes

Abstract

A software product is said to have high quality if it is having high customer satisfaction. The same is said to have lack of quality if it is not satisfying all the customer requirements. In conventional development methods series of life cycle activities are followed very strictly. Conventional methods are process oriented approaches. In conventional approaches, to deal with complex software products many quality measures and models like ISO, CMMI, SPICE, SIX SIGMA etc; are introduced. Agile development totally changed the way software is developed. Agile is a family of development methods also called as Lightweight Processes. Change can be introduced at any point of time by using agile methods. Pair programming and Test-Driven Development (TDD) are some of the key practices of agile development to achieve quality in software products. In Agile methods quality activities are done as part of the development not as a separate activity. The role of QA practices in agile projects needs to be redefined to achieve high quality. The method proposed is use of an extra layer of QA in agile development projects. The proposed approach is developer must not test his own written code, but in agile development most of the testing is done by developer that must be kept on minimum level in order to enhance quality.

 

Keywords: Agile Methodologies, Software Quality, Software Quality Assurance, Pair Programming, TDD;