BACHELOR OF APPLIED SCIENCE (GEOINFORMATICS)

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ASSIGNMENT I

GROUP V, TACKLING QUESTION 5

GROUP MEMBERS:
1.ABIGAEL WAMBUI
2.LOUIS WAMBUA
3.LEONE JUMA
4.VICTOR KORIR

Question 5:
5(a)
COQ is a means to sum up product quality-related costs (control, detection, prevention) and defect-related costs
(failure, non-conformance, deficiencies). By doing this, company management can evaluate the soundness of
investments into quality. COQ elements include: Cost of control and cost of failure of control.

5(b)
Cost of failure of control under cost of nonconformance include:

• External failure costs – linked to defects the customer finds post-sale, e.g. costs to process customer
complaints, returns, warranty claims.

• Internal failure costs – linked to defects found before selling the product to customers, e.g. re-work, re-testing,
bug fixing, re-design.

Cost of control under cost of conformance include:

• Appraisal costs – incurred to determine conformance to quality requirements, e.g. measurements, audits,
evaluations, inspections, testing.

• Prevention costs – incurred to prevent bad quality, e.g. quality planning, project management, feature review,
product review, Agile and process review, team training.
QUESTION 5 C.

COST OF QUALITY

COST OF GOOD QUALITY COST OF POOR QUALITY

Prevention Appraisal Costs Internal Failure External Failure

PREVENTION

1. Process Capability
2. Variation Reduction
3. Lessons Learned
4. Education/Training

APPRAISAL COSTS

1. In-Process Inspection
2. Calibration
3. Auditing
4. Registration Costs

INTERNAL FAILURE

1. Process Delay
2. Rework
3. Retest/Validation
4. Loss of Capacity

EXTERNAL FAILURE

1. Customer Returns
2. Warranty
 3. Loss of Customer sales
4. Lower quality scores

Question 6(a)

A precedence network is a visual representation technique that depicts the activities involved in a
project. It is a method of constructing a project schedule network diagrams that uses boxes/nodes
to represent activities and connects them with arrows to show dependencies.

Types:

Finish-to-Start

Finish-to-Finish

Mandatory Information to be included in a precedence network.

Activities, Durations of process and Date dependencies.

Question 6(b)
What do you understand by a critical path as used in Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT)?
Use a simple example with three of four activities to explain the critical path. [2 Marks]

A critical path is an algorithm for scheduling a set of project activities. It is determined by identifying
the longest stretch of dependent activities and measuring the time required to complete them from
start to finish. These are some of the examples which can be used by critical path;

• The construction of a building (or a highway).

• Planning and launching a new product.
• Installing and debugging a computer system.
• Research and engineering design projects.
• Scheduling ship construction and repairs.

Question 6(c)
What are the advantages and disadvantages of PERT? Use a fictitious case to demonstrate the each
advantage and/or disadvantages. [2 Marks]

The main advantage of PERT is that they offer a clean, minimalist overview of a project. This makes it
easier to identify important success factors such as the critical path, key tasks and potential
bottlenecks.

The main disadvantage of PERT is that they can be very labour-intensive to create. Just creating the
initial network diagram can be a significant undertaking. Creating realistic estimates of task duration
can require a lot of skill and experience. It may also require some degree of research.

Once your project moves into business as usual, charts can still be a useful way of keeping track of
your performance. For example, a chart of accounts can help you keep track of financial movements
and an inventory control chart can help you manage your supplies and avoid wastage.
 Question 6(d)

There are four types of task dependencies, and each one has its own specific reason why you would
use it.
• Finish-to-Start
• Finish -to-Finish
• Start-to-Start
• Start-to-Finish

Question 6(e)
Earned Value (EV) is a way to measure and monitor the level of work completed on a project against
the plan. Simply put, it’s a quick way to tell if you’re behind schedule or over budget on your project.
You can calculate the EV of a project by multiplying the percentage complete by the total project
budget.