Application of QFD to the software development process

Abstract

Explores the issue of software development process improvement. Total quality management (TQM) tools have been studied as possible means to improve the quality of the software that is becoming an important part of organizational processes. The TQM philosophy that has been so successfully applied in manufacturing holds that quality must be built into the production process and not inspected into the product. Given the complexity of modern software applications, the ability to move away from using testing and inspection as quality control methods is very attractive. Examines the current literature on software development process improvement. Particular attention is paid to how customer requirements are gathered and translated into system requirements. Finds that current methods for requirements definition do not provide a formal means to deploy the “voice of the customer” into system specifications. Further, finds after a review, that current software quality function deployment (QFD) methods suffer from a number of shortcomings. Proposes a four‐stage model for performing software‐oriented QFD to address these significant problems.

Ensuring Success and Quality through the Use of Standards in Team Projects: Students’ Perceptions

“…This is consistent with the literature which claims that if software is tested properly and functions correctly it contributes to success and quality [18,30]. Many teams only performed informal testing and did not execute formal testing methods due to poor time management.…”

“…The responses varied significantly, but comments relating to testing however showed some consistency. Barnett and Raja [18] state that many authors in the literature view testing as a means of achieving software quality. Comments like: "testing is a very, very crucial part of the systems development, and it should occur on a constant basis" and "include quality assurance and checking consistently" confirm that students agree with the view of testing being important to maintain quality and improve their final product.…”

“…It is therefore not surprising that it is recognized as one of the 10 knowledge areas of the Software Engineering discipline and pervasive in the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) [17]. Software quality has traditionally being defined as "fitness for use" [18]. According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001 standard, software quality is "the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements" [19].…”

A fuzzy regression and optimization approach for setting target levels in software quality function deployment

“…Barnett and Raja (1995) proposed a four-stage model for performing SQFD. Elboushi and Sherif (1997) used the QFD process with object-oriented design (OOD) software technology.…”

Identification of Software NFR based on the Fuzzy-QFD Model

“…Identifying NFR of the software product accurately is an important link in the requirement development [26]. QFD can overcome some problems appearing in the requirement analysis [27], effectively recognize users' requirements, convert them into a series of detailed design specifications, and identify the relative importance of different NFR attributes of the software product [28][29]. Moreover, the effectiveness of QFD in the software requirement development has been recognized [30][31][32][33], so the research is also based on QFD model.…”