CSCS351

Software
Quality
Assurance
LECTURE 3

QUALITY COSTS

1 DR. AASIA KHANUM, FORMAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LAHORE

 Cost of Non-Quality

Bad software has destroyed life and property!

Therac 25 Yahoo data brea
ch

DR. AASIA KHANUM, DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, FC COLLEGE, LAHORE

 Major
Sub-categories Definition Typical Costs
Categories
Quality basis Effort to define quality, and Definition of release criteria for
definition to set quality goals, acceptance testing and related quality
standards, and thresholds. standards
Quality trade-off analysis.
Project and process- Effort to prevent poor Process improvement, updating of
Prevention Cost
oriented interventions product quality or improve procedures and work instructions;
process quality metric collection and analysis; internal
and external quality audits; training
and certification of employees

Discovery of the Discovery of the level of Test, walk-through, inspection, desk- Categorie
Evaluation or
condition of the
product
Non conformance. check, quality assurance
s
Appraisal Cost
Ensuring the
achievement of
Quality control gating Contract/proposal review, product
quality audits, “go” or “no go” of
quality. decisions to release or proceed, quality
assurance of subcontractor Software
Internal anomalies or
nonconformance
Problem detected before
delivery to the customer
Rework (e.g. recode, retest, rereview,
redocument, etc.) Quality
Cost of Anomalies
or Non
Problem detected after
delivery to the customer
Warranty support, resolution of
complaints, reimbursement damage Costs
External anomalies or paid to customer, domino effect (e.g. (Krasner,1998)
conformance other projects are delayed), reduction
non conformance
of sales, damage to reputation of
enterprise, increased marketing cost

DR. AASIA KHANUM, FORMAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LAHORE 3

 Balance between
the software
quality level and
the cost of
quality

DR. AASIA KHANUM, FORMAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LAHORE 4

Costs of propagating an error
$14,402

Cost to correct a defect

$7,136

$977
$455
$139

Requirements Construction Integration Acceptance In

and Design Tests Tests Operation

[JON 00]

DR. AASIA KHANUM, FORMAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LAHORE 5

 Defect Injection During Development
Defects (%)

System Development Phase Adapted from (Selby, 2007)

DR. AASIA KHANUM, FORMAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LAHORE 6

 Data on software quality costs at
Raytheon
70
Start of intiative
CMM level 1 CMM level 3 Compare cost of

Percentage of total project cost

Rework at various
60 CMM Levels
TCoSQ
50
Rework

40
Cost of
Conformance
30

20

Appraisal
10 Rework
Prevention
0
87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96
Year
[HAL 96]

DR. AASIA KHANUM, FORMAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LAHORE

7
 Cost of Quality and Process Maturity
Rework costs vary between 15% and 25% of the development costs for
an organization having defined processes (e.g. CMM level 3)

Rework
Process Maturity (percent of total
development effort)
Immature ≥ 50 %
Project Controlled 25 % to 50 %
Defined Organizational process 15 % to 25 %
Management by Fact 5 % to 15 %
Continuous learning and ≤5%
improvement

DR. AASIA KHANUM, FORMAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, LAHORE 8