essay

Suppose the software development company you work for is experiencing difficulties due to the large number of bugs encountered during final validation testing.  The testing organization is complaining that extra effort is required because of the amount of retesting required after bugs have been fixed.  This type of situation usually results in delays in the shipment of software to the customer or in some cases the release of software with too many unresolved defects.  In order to better understand and deal with this problem:

1. Formulate an appropriate quality goal (give a general statement of the goal).

1. Describe the goal’s purpose.

1. Identify a reasonable perspective in which this goal should be considered.

1. Specify any environmental factors (process factors, people factors, methods, tools, constraints, etc.) that apply.  You may make any assumptions you like regarding your software company, its management and employees, and the way it develops software.  Just be sure to clearly state your assumptions.

1. List a set of questions that would need to be answered in order to achieve the quality goal you established. 

1. For each question, specify the metrics needed to answer it.  Be sure to explicitly specify what things need to be measured (direct/primitive metrics).