Standards are Necessary but Not Sufficient for Excellent Software

摘要

Software is becoming increasingly pervasive in business systems and everyday life. Software is the glue that holds together complex systems. It is impossible to talk about the quality of a software dependent system without discussing software quality. A software dependent system is a system that can't perform its intended function if the software doesn't work correctly. However, since software is invisible, systems developers often do not give it sufficient attention. Nevertheless, inadequate quality can put businesses and lives at risk. This paper provides a systematic overview of software quality in the context of a system. This includes static, dynamic, and customer/user perspectives. Quality standards have been widely adopted in recent years. However, these standards only address static aspects of quality, e.g., conformance to requirements. Moreover, the author's experience shows that these standards are often incompletely implemented. This is facilitated by a lack of appropriate feedback on the quality status of software products. As described here, objective measurements and independent in-process audits can be part of the solution.