Defining Software Quality Assurance

Name: Defining Software Quality Assurance
Author: Andrew Levin

Learn where software quality assurance originated from.

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to Knowledge City's course, Defining Software Quality Assurance. In this module we'll talk about what exactly is software quality assurance, or SQA? Well, SQA is more than just finding bugs in software, although that is a big part of it. In fact, the first bug was found back in 1947, and there's the little guy now. That was a moth that flew into the Mark II computer. The Mark II computer stopped working properly so they sent someone in. That's the Mark II computer. Back then you could actually go inside of computers. The Mark II was an electro mechanical computer so it had mechanical parts inside. So this poor moth flew in and got mushed in one of the relays. The team that found it was Grace Hopper's team. Now Grace Hopper did a lot in the field of computing. In fact, many people thought she coined the term bug, but actually that's not true. They did some research and found that Edison used the term back in 1870. He wasn't talking about computers, but he used the term bug. What Grace Hopper really worked on, and what she's known for is working on COBOL, common business oriented language. It was one of the first successful programming languages or software in the world. Unfortunately, they could have used SQA back then because COBOL brought us the Y2K problem, and soon to be the Y2K38 problem, otherwise known as 2038. Could SQA have prevented this? Well, what is SQA, before we get into that, what is quality assurance? Well, quality, this is taken directly from the dictionary, is the degree of excellence of something. Is it fit for the purpose? Does it work? And assurance is a positive declaration that the product will perform well. In fact, will it meet or even exceed the expectations? So did COBOL 60, that's when it came out in 1960, would it have passed those Q and A's? Yeah, it would have. COBOL 60 was an excellent program. It was used by the military, by corporations. Very robust. It did excellent. It gave exactly what it needed, it exceeded expectations. But what if we go by today's SQA standards? Well, how do we define that today? Well, SQA today is, does the software function as it was asked to function, is it working as it's required? Does it still work under normal and more importantly, abnormal stressors? Like if it's hit by a lot of people at once, does it have stability? Can it be reliably maintained? Is it easy to maintain? Is it easy to use by the end user? Is it efficient, does it use its resources properly? And can changes be made easily and efficiently? Well, let's see. Did COBOL 60 pass this? Um no, the Y2K problem showed that. Back in the 60s, late 50s, early 60s, memory cost thousands upon thousands of dollars. So in order to save money on the memory what they did is they made the date only two characters. So in the year 1999, when it turned over to the year 2000, all that these computers saw was 1900. Well, back then, if you asked them, "Is this gonna be quality?" They would said, "Yes, nobody's gonna keep using this in 40 years." Unfortunately they were. So we ran into the Y2K problem. Is it easily maintained? Not really, because you had to go through all that code to find all these two character dates to turn them in to four character dates. And the other problem is in the year 2038, anybody who's using a 32 bit operating system, their computer will think it's 1970. That's a whole other issue. So by today's standards, COBOL 60 wouldn't have been considered quality, but they really didn't have software quality assurance back then. Thank you, and I'll see you at the next lesson.

Beginner Provider : Andrew Levin 3 Lessons · 12m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese

Course Description

In this chapter you will briefly examine the history of SQA, its origins and original uses. You will also learn the definition of SQA and how to recognize “high quality” in the context of software development

What You'll Learn

Define what Software Quality Assurance (SQA) encompasses in software development
Explain why Software Quality Assurance is needed
Trace the history of SQA, its origins and original uses
Recognize "high quality" in the context of software development
Distinguish Software QA from software testing
Identify the uses of Software QA

Key Takeaways

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) has a history with distinct origins and original uses that this chapter examines.
SQA can be defined and applied to recognize "high quality" in the context of software development.
Software QA serves identifiable uses within software development.
Software QA and software testing are related but treated as separate topics in this course.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

It examines the history of Software Quality Assurance (SQA), its origins and original uses, defines what SQA encompasses, and explains how to recognize "high quality" in the context of software development.

What are the learning objectives?

To learn what Software Quality Assurance (SQA) encompasses and why we need SQA.

What lessons are included?

The course includes three lessons: What is Software Quality Assurance (SQA), Software QA and its Uses, and Software QA and Software Testing.

What skills does this course relate to?

It relates to Quality Assurance, Quality Assessment, Software Quality (SQA/SQC), Software Quality Management, Certified Software Quality Engineer, and Certified Software Quality Analyst.