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Adherence to a defined process or standards is necessary to achieve satisfactory software quality. However, in order to judge whether practices are effective at achieving the required integrity of a software product, a measurement-based approach to the correctness of the software development is required. A defined and measurable process is a requirement for producing safe software productively. In this study the contribution of quality assurance to the software development process, and in particular the contribution that software inspections make to produce satisfactory software products, is addressed. I have defined a new model of software inspection effectiveness, which uses a Bayesian Belief Network to combine both subjective and objective data to evaluate the probability of an effective software inspection. Its performance shows an improvement over the existing published models of inspection effectiveness. These previous models made questionable assumptions over the distribution of errors and were essentially static. They could not make use of experience both in terms of process improvement and the increased experience of the inspectors. A sensitivity analysis of my model showed that it is consistent with the attributes which were thought important by Michael Fagan in his research into the software inspection method. The performance of my model show that it is an improvement over published models and over a multiple logistic regression model, which was formed using the same calibration data. By applying my model of software inspection effectiveness before the inspection takes place, project managers will be able to make better use of inspection resource available. Applying the model using data collected during the inspection will help in estimation of residual errors in a product. Decisions can then be made if further investigations are required to identify errors. The modelling process has been used successfully in an industrial application.

Thesis Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology in Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technonlogy / The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in business has evolved to such an extent that many organizations (if not all) rely on Information Technology (IT) systems to better manage their processes, get competitive advantage, improve performance (efficiency and effectiveness), provide quality services on time and most importantly to keep customers happy. This has changed the way people communicate and conduct businesses, lowering processing cost, time and improving a return on investment. Therefore, high quality software systems are essential. Organizations adopt Agile Scrum methodologies in order to develop applications that help them to obtain a return on investment quickly, to improve customer satisfaction and to maintain competitive advantage. However, the IT industry is yet to develop error-free software that meets the expected quality standards. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the extent to which software quality assurance measures can be understood and applied to maximize the quality of software projects developed under Scrum methodology. A qualitative research method informed by an interpretive approach was used to collect and analyse data. Following the purposive sampling technique, five Scrum teams operating in different environments and two academics from one academic institution were interviewed. Structuration Theory (ST) was then used as an analytical framework to analyse data and to improve the understanding of Scrum practices and related quality assurance (QA) processes. Drawing on the major terms of ST, the contextual terrain of the Scrum development process was mapped. It reflected that rules are important aspects of Scrum functions. However, rules are not as strictly applied as in the traditional methodologies. The developer skill, project type and size have a direct influence on the practice/s. In Scrum, rules are flexible in that they can be modified to meet the environment and conditions of the team. Equally significant are resources, most particularly, time and the human resources in the form of developers and Scrum leaders. Otherwise, unit testing, user acceptance testing, close collaboration and code reviews were perceived as the most important practices in Scrum projects. In view of the findings, recommendations can be summed up into 4 main points; (1) that to ensure quality assurance in Scrum, Scrum teams, especially team leaders, should enforce compliance to standards, regardless of time pressures and tight deadlines; (2) It seems that the practice of working with the client to test final products as a quality assurance mechanism is working for all parties. This practice is encouraged and must be maintained; (3) Code reviews must be enforced, and that organisations invest in resources including the constant training of developers; (4) Project product owners, project managers, team leaders and business analysts should regularly meet with the user to verify requirements prior to the implementation phase. Active stakeholder involvement can minimize development costs and time.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / John M. Hatcliff / Current practices in software development heavily emphasize the development of reusable and modular software, which allow software components to be developed and maintained independently. While a component-oriented approach offers a number of benefits, it presents several quality assurance challenges including validating the correctness of individual components as well as their integration. Design-by-contract (DBC) offers a promising solution that emphasizes precisely defined and checkable interface specifications for software components. However, existing tools for the DBC paradigm often have some weaknesses: (1) they have difficulty in dealing with dynamically allocated data; (2) specification and checking efforts are disconnected from quality assurance tools; and (3) user feedback is quite poor. We present Kiasan, a framework that synergistically combines a number of automated reasoning techniques including symbolic execution, model checking, theorem proving, and constraint solving to support design-by-contract reasoning of object-oriented programs written in languages such as Java and C#. Compared to existing approaches to Java contract verification, Kiasan can check much stronger behavioral properties of object-oriented software including properties that make extensive use of heap-allocated data and provide stronger coverage guarantees. In addition, Kiasan naturally generates counter examples illustrating contract violations, visualization of code effects, and JUnit test cases that are driven by code and user-supplied specifications. Coverage/- cost trade-offs are controlled by user-specified bounds on the length of heap-reference chains and number of loop iterations. Kiasan’s unit test case generation facilities compare very favorably with similar tools. Finally, in contrast to other approaches based on symbolic execution, Kiasan has a rigorous foundation: we have shown that Kiasan is relatively sound and complete and the test case generation algorithm is sound.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The advancement in technology has revolutionized the role of software in recent years. Software usage is practically found in all areas of the industry and has become a prime factor in the overall working of the companies. Simultaneously with an increase in the utilization of software, the software quality assurance parameters have become more crucial and complex. Currently the quality measurement approaches, standards, and models that are applied in the software industry are extremely divergent. Many a time the correct approach will wind up to be a combination of di erent concepts and techniques from di erent software assurance approaches [1]. Thus, having a platform that provides a single workspace for incorporating multiple software quality assurance approaches will ease the overall software quality process. In this thesis we have proposed a theoretical framework for distributed software quality assurance, which will be able to continuously monitor a source code repository; create a snapshot of the system for a given commit (both past and present); the snapshot can be used to create a multi-granular blockchain of the system and its metrics (i.e.,metadata) which we believe will let the tool developers and vendors participate continuously in assuring quality and security of systems and in the process be accessible when required while being rewarded for their services.

Context. In recent years, Software Quality Assurance (SQA) has become a crucial part of software development processes. Therefore, modern software development processes led to an increase in demand for manual and automated code quality assurance. Manual code quality reviews can be a time-consuming and expensive process with varying results. Thus, automated code reviews turn out to be a preferred alternative for mitigating this process. However, commercial and open-source static code analyzer tools often offer deep analysis with long lead time. Objectives. In this thesis work, the main aim is to introduce an early code quality assurance tool, which features a combination of software metrics. The tool should be able to examine code quality and complexity of a telecommunication grade software product such as source code of specific Ericsson product by Ericsson. This tool should encapsulate complexity and quality of a software product with regards to its efficiency, scope, flexibility, and execution time. Methods. For this purpose, the background section of the thesis is dedicated to in-depth research on software metrics included in well-known static code analyzers. Then, development environment, under investigation source code of Ericsson product, and collected software metric for evaluation were presented. Next, according to each software metric’s characteristics, point of interest, and requirement, a set of steps based on a Susman’s action research cycle were defined. Moreover, SWAT, a suitable software analytics toolkit, employed to extract conducted experiment data of each software metric from a static analyzer code named Lizard in order to detect most efficient software metrics. Outcome of conducted experiment demonstrates relationship of selected software metrics with one another. Results. The chosen software metrics were evaluated based on a variety of vital factors especially actual data from number of defects of specific Ericsson product. Highly effective software metrics from investigations in this thesis work were implemented as a new model named hybrid model to be utilized as an early quality assurance. Conclusions. The proposed model, which consist of well-performing software metrics, demonstrate an impressive performance as an early code quality indicator. Consequently, the utilized model in this master thesis could be studied in a future research to further investigate the effectiveness and robustness of this tool an early quality assurance.

Orientadores: Ana Cervigni Guerra, Luiz Eduardo Buzato / Dissertação (mestrado profissional) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-07T01:22:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tiago_AdrianoGarcia_M.pdf: 2213856 bytes, checksum: 37d26d4b397473ca137d67efbc23e673 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Avaliar produtos de software constitui uma atividade em que a demanda cresce significativamente, pois os usuários exigem cada vez mais por qualidade, eficiência, eficácia. Modelos e Métodos de avaliação da qualidade de processos e produtos de software têm se firmado como um valioso auxílio à obtenção de produtos de software com qualidade aprimorada e mais confiáveis. Para essa avaliação constitui fundamental ferramenta a medição dos artefatos e processos que envolvem o desenvolvimento de produtos de software. As características do processo de desenvolvimento de software dependem de um gerenciamento efetivo, baseado em um plano de projeto definido com base em estimativas mais precisas. Por meio do presente estudo, pesquisas sobre tamanho e estimativas de complexidade para sistemas de software são o foco na fundamentação das bases da Engenharia de Software. Descreve-se aqui, conceitos importantes para o entendimento da base fundamental para uso de métricas. Uma Metodologia para Métricas de Qualidade de Software, baseadas no trabalho da ISO/IEC esta descrito e pretende interpretar a nova norma ISO/IEC 9126-2. Contribui para os esforços para a melhoria da qualidade de software e melhoria na execução do processo de medição, utilizando-se como primeiro passo o presente trabalho. O resultado desse trabalho é uma compilação em relação aos benefícios do uso de métricas à sua implementação no processo de desenvolvimento de software, considerando-se os aspectos tecnológicos, humanos e econômicos envolvidos em cada tópico abordado ao longo do trabalho. / Abstract: Not informed. / Mestrado / Engenharia de Software / Mestre Profissional em Computação

This thesis deals with the quality assurance of software developed within a small business and also it covers software testing as a means for checking the quality of software. The goal of this thesis is to reveal weaknesses in quality assurance of software developed with particular small business and weaknesses in quality of developed software itself. The real benefit of this thesis is to provide solution to discovered weaknesses by defining appropriate activities and tools of software quality assurance. The main purpose of these suggested activities is to improve the product quality to fulfill the expectations of users and developers. At first, it is necessary to determine the factors influencing the quality of the software and the causes leading to a decline in quality. This issue, together with the theoretical bases of software quality assurance is covered in the first part of thesis. The current state of quality assurance in the company is analyzed in the second part of the thesis. Appropriate measures, activities and tools that will help improve the software quality, are recommended based on the results of this analysis in the final section of this thesis.

The advancement in technology has revolutionized the role of software in recent years. Software usage is practically found in all areas of the industry and has become a prime factor in the overall working of the companies. Simultaneously with an increase in the utilization of software, the software quality assurance parameters have become more crucial and complex. Currently the quality measurement approaches, standards, and models that are applied in the software industry are extremely divergent. Many a time the correct approach will wind up to be a combination of di erent concepts and techniques from di erent software assurance approaches [1]. Thus, having a platform that provides a single workspace for incorporating multiple software quality assurance approaches will ease the overall software quality process. In this thesis we have proposed a theoretical framework for distributed software quality assurance, which will be able to continuously monitor a source code repository; create a snapshot of the system for a given commit (both past and present); the snapshot can be used to create a multi-granular blockchain of the system and its metrics (i.e.,metadata) which we believe will let the tool developers and vendors participate continuously in assuring quality and security of systems and in the process be accessible when required while being rewarded for their services.

Network usage is an important quality metric for mobile apps. Slow networks, low monthly traffic quotas and high roaming fees restrict mobile users’ amount of usable Internet traffic. Companies wanting their apps to stay competitive must be aware of their network usage and changes to it. Short feedback loops for the impact of code changes are key in agile software development. To notify stakeholders of changes when they happen without being prohibitively expensive in terms of manpower the change detection must be fully automated. To further decrease the manpower overhead cost of implementing network usage change detection the system need to have low configuration requirements, and keep the false positive rate low while managing to detect larger changes. This thesis proposes an automated change detection method for network activity to quickly notify stakeholders with relevant information to begin a root cause analysis after a change in the network activity is introduced. With measurements of the Spotify’s iOS app we show that the tool achieves a low rate of false positives while detecting relevant changes in the network activity even for apps with dynamic network usage patterns as Spotify. / Nätverksaktivitet är ett viktigt kvalitetsmått för mobilappar. Mobilanvändare begränsas ofta av långsamma nätverk, låg månatlig trafikkvot och höga roamingavgifter. Företag som vill ha konkurrenskraftiga appar behöver vara medveten om deras nätverksaktivitet och förändringar av den. Snabb återkoppling för effekten av kodändringar är vitalt för agil programutveckling. För att underrätta intressenter om ändringar när de händer utan att vara avskräckande dyrt med avseende på arbetskraft måste ändringsdetekteringen vara fullständigt automatiserad. För att ytterligare minska arbetskostnaderna för ändringsdetektering av nätverksaktivitet måste detekteringssystemet vara snabbt att konfigurera, hålla en låg grad av felaktig detektering samtidigt som den lyckas identifiera stora ändringar. Den här uppsatsen föreslår ett automatiserat förändringsdetekteringsverktyg för nätverksaktivitet för att snabbt meddela stakeholders med relevant information för påbörjan av grundorsaksanalys när en ändring som påverkar nätverksaktiviteten introduceras. Med hjälp av mätningar på Spotifys iOS-app visar vi att verktyget når en låg grad av felaktiga detekteringar medan den identifierar ändringar i nätverksaktiviteten även för appar med så dynamisk nätverksanvändning som Spotify.