Take a look at the new version of this page: [ beta version ]. Tell us what you think.

ABSTRACT

Software quality improvement initiatives are frequently attempted inside major software development companies. These initiatives often face difficulty motivating managers and developers. Yet the success of these improvement initiatives is directly related to receiving support from them. A defect-driven improvement process is proposed, aiming to improve the adoption of techniques by these key groups. The process is based on using defect data to identify issues in the current development process. ABB has used this process to focus and motivate change in three major development organizations around the world. Results show that this process yields measurable improvements in organizations that have been reluctant to change in the past.

REFERENCES

• 1: Nathan Baddoo , Tracy Hall, De-motivators for software process improvement: an analysis of practitioners' views, Journal of Systems and Software, v.66 n.1, p.23-33, 15 April 2003 [doi>10.1016/S0164-1212(02)00060-2]
• 2: Boris Beizer, Software testing techniques (2nd ed.), Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, NY, 1990
• 3: Tomas Berling , Thomas Thelin, An Industrial Case Study of the Verification and Validation Activities, Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Software Metrics, p.226, September 03-05, 2003
• 4: David N. Card, Learning from Our Mistakes with Defect Causal Analysis, IEEE Software, v.15 n.1, p.56-63, January 1998 [doi>10.1109/52.646883]
• 5: Ram Chillarege , Inderpal S. Bhandari , Jarir K. Chaar , Michael J. Halliday , Diane S. Moebus , Bonnie K. Ray , Man-Yuen Wong, Orthogonal Defect Classification-A Concept for In-Process Measurements, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.18 n.11, p.943-956, November 1992 [doi>10.1109/32.177364]
• 6: IEEE. IEEE standard classification for software anomalies. IEEE Std 1044--1993. 2 Jun 1994
• 7: Capers Jones, Applied software measurement: assuring productivity and quality, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, 1991
• 8: Cem Kaner , Hung Q. Nguyen , Jack L. Falk, Testing Computer Software, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1993
• 9: Marek Leszak , Dewayne E. Perry , Dieter Stoll, A case study in root cause defect analysis, Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Software engineering, p.428-437, June 04-11, 2000, Limerick, Ireland [doi>10.1145/337180.337232]
• 10: Thomas J. Ostrand , Elaine J. Weyuker, Collecting and categorizing software error data in an industrial environment, Journal of Systems and Software, v.4 n.4, p.289-300, Nov. 1984 [doi>10.1016/0164-1212(84)90028-1]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.9 Management
          Subjects: Software quality assurance (SQA)

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.8 Metrics
          Subjects: Process metrics

General Terms:
Experimentation, Management, Measurement, Verification

Keywords:
defect classification, empirical study, software quality improvement