Master of Information Technology MSIT 632 Software Quality Assurance Mar 2012

Project Group Assignment

Application of SQA
Prepared for: Dr. Ahmad D. Jaffar Acknowledgement: Dr. Mustafa Sanver (adopted from Prof. Jeff Tian tian@engr.smu.edu) Group Report Prepared by: <Student IDs & Names>

Sources of information and advice

You may do this project in groups of 2 or 3 members. Your report must be the work of the group only. All sources of information must be properly referenced. This includes, but is not limited to, people, books, references, videos, the Internet, etc. To use the work of others without identifying it is plagiarism. This is a form of academic dishonesty and will not be tolerated, and may lead to dismissal from the College. Student declaration: By submitting this assignment through WebCT Vista, we are declaring that the following is true: We have read and understood the note on sources of information and advice. We have produced this piece of work without help from others apart from those noted. This is our own work. In addition, This assignment is my own work. The sources of all quotations, both direct and indirect, have been fully cited; All material used in the preparation of this assignment has been acknowledged. This assignment has not been submitted for assessment in any other paper. The penalty for cheating is dismissal from the Higher Colleges of Technology. Group Signature:

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Master of Information Technology MSIT 632 Software Quality Assurance Mar 2012

L.O. 1. L.O. 2. L.O. 3. L.O. 4.

Learning outcomes (L.O.s) covered on this assessment:

Critically analyze various effective software quality assurance guidelines and standards Effectively apply software quality assurance (SQA) methods, tools and techniques Plan for, implement and manage the integrated software quality assurance process Suggest the necessary software quality assurance steps, controls and results needed at each step or phase of the systems development life cycle to assure communication and satisfaction with both user/client and information systems personnel Analyze information through static and dynamic techniques including walkthroughs and inspections Control critical components using Configuration Management (CM) Evaluate how new technologies impact software quality assurance and the systems development lrocesses ife cycle a how to bIenefit from their application of IT Examine ITIL p and nd u enderstand valuate the role of TIL processes in improvement operations. Define main activities of each process. Define the scope and operation of ITIL-compatible Services. Analyze and assess Challenges, Critical success factors, and Risks.

L.O. 5. L.O. 6. L.O. 7. L.O. 8 L.O. 9 L.O. 10 L.O. 11

Instructor Feedback:
Grade: Project Proposal Project Summary Presentation Report 10% 10% 25% 55%

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Master of Information Technology MSIT 632 Software Quality Assurance Mar 2012

Introduction
The project constitutes the 40% of the final grade. The important dates are below: A project proposal and list of group members: Tue-17-Jan-2012 (last class of 2nd week) A project summary: Tue-24-Jan-2012 (Last class of 3rd week) Project presentation: Mon-30-Jan-2012 (2nd last class of the semester) A final project report with your presentation material: due on Sat-4th-Feb-2012

Project Information and Description

Acceptable projects and project proposals
There are two types of basic choices for your course project: 1. An application of some specific testing techniques/models to some programs/products you are developing/testing and maintaining/supporting. For example, you may choose to construct control flow and data flow models to test a module you are developing at your work. Another example is the development, validation, and usage of an operational profile for a large software system you are working on. It's generally a good idea to consider multiple testing techniques and actually use a couple of them in your project to get a hands-on feeling of how different techniques and models work in practical applications. Pay special attention to the evaluation of your testing/analysis results. Be prepared to answer this type of questions: How do you know if the testing technique works? What's the basis for comparison (baseline)? What about some other testing techniques that might be appropriate? Your answer can be based on either the practical evidence (executing several types of testing cases and observing the results) or based on logical arguments (suitability of certain testing technique on certain types of products), or both. You are expected to study/review relevant material from Part IV of our textbook to prepare them for the analyses above. Avoid applying a high-level analysis to answer the above questions without going into details. 2. In addition to or instead of testing activities above, you may choose to perform various other quality assurance activities and document the results. Possibilities include comprehensive inspection, defect prevention and process improvement, formal verification, and fault tolerance. You may also collect inspection/testing/QA 3records for a product at your work, and construct quality models to analyze the results, to assess the effectiveness of your inspection/testing/QA techniques, or to identify high-defect modules for focused quality improvement actions. If you choose this second type of project, make sure you are focusing on quality that can be quantified and analyzed. (For example, a process definition/improvement initiative with only a logical argument for its superiority is not suitable for this class.)
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Master of Information Technology MSIT 632 Software Quality Assurance Mar 2012

Where to Find Something to Test or to Perform QA on?

Well, I mentioned about your work, a product, or a sub-part of a product, that you are involved at your work. However, if you don't feel comfortable taking this as your class project or talking about it (without mentioning product name and raw data) in class, you need to find something else to work on. Notice: Your project report must contain testing related technical information, such as test models, test cases, and test results, although you don't have to give detailed product information. As a rule of thumb, if you feel uncomfortable with the material you have to put into this report, find something else to work on. Many students used their past projects from work, from their former college/graduate school classes, from their hobby (e.g., game programming), or from their role as users of some specific packages/software/web-site/etc. Apply the same sensitivity rule as for your current project above. You can get it from someone else. Open source software and programs are a wonderful source for many student projects in the past as well.

Formatting and Layout

Project proposals

You project proposal should be around 3-4 double spaced pages in length, and should include the following information: a one-paragraph abstract (at the beginning of the proposal), introduction: clearly identify the problem that you are going to address, brief background information, solution strategy you intend to use (which testing technique? what kind of analyses? etc.), expected results, analysis of result to be performed, follow-up actions, a rough schedule, Indicate whether you'll be making a project presentation, and, if possible, your preferred presentation date. Please also provide information regarding roles and responsibilities of each group member. The amount of work proposed for a group project should be appropriate for the group size. Please keep in mind that by the time you submit your project proposal, we have only covered less than a quarter of the class material, although an overview of the whole course was given at the beginning of the semester. Therefore, you may make certain modifications to the things you propose, but the basic framework should the there in your proposal.

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Master of Information Technology MSIT 632 Software Quality Assurance Mar 2012

Once I have reviewed your proposal and provided my feedback, you need to address the issues I raised in your final project report. However, in most of the cases, you do NOT need to submit a revised proposal. In the rare case that your proposal is marked "U" for "unacceptable", you need to communicate with me via e-mails/meetings to make it acceptable, and you may be required to resubmit a revised proposal for this case.

Project Summary

All students are required to submit a project summary half of a page or a full page. You summary should focus on the main results from your project for us to get the basic picture. Here is a template for your project summary (Prepared by Jeff Tian tian@engr.smu.edu).

Project Presentation

Each presentation could last anywhere between 25 and 30 minutes. You need to highlight the problem/solution-strategy/results/analysis for us to get the basic picture, but not necessarily too much details. Each group member will present his part and answer the questions related to that part. Note: sole responsibility of a member cannot be writing the report and preparing the presentation.

Project Report

The project report should be treated as a term paper, around 15 double-spaced pages in length, but no longer than 20 pages. It should clearly and comprehensively states the background, problem, strategy, activities, results, result analysis, lessons learned, follow-up actions, and a high level summary (and an abstract at the beginning). Additional material, such as graphs, models, test cases, etc. produced, information sources and raw data, customer surveys, etc., can be included in the appendix and clearly marked as such (so it will not be counted towards your 20 page quota). A couple of common mistakes to avoid: It is supposed to be a "report", not a set of "presentation slides". So, limit your use of lists/bullets, and put most of the material/discussions in paragraphs. Your project report must contain testing related technical information, such as important test models, test cases, test results, and analysis of the results. In addition, you need to describe/discuss this information unless it is clearly self-explanatory. On the other hand, you shouldn't include all the graphs, models, test cases, etc. produced for the project in the report text itself. As mentioned above, they can be included in the appendix, if you desire, together with other material, such as raw data, customer surveys, etc. Here is a sample paper based on the project report of the student.

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Master of Information Technology MSIT 632 Software Quality Assurance Mar 2012

Sources
It is very important that you provide outside sources for your report, to support your plans. You must provide at least 3 referenced sources in your report. Preference will be given to higher quality sources of information such as magazines, newspapers, white papers, etc. (hard or softcopy both acceptable). Uncontrolled web content will not accepted.

Format
Required font for this report is Arial 12 point with 1.15 spacing. Use appropriate headings for creating the Table of Contents. Required reference format is APA.

Grading
Project Proposal

10% 10% 25%

Project Summary Presentation - presentation skills (10pts) - timing, eye-contact etc. - professionalism/completeness in presentation material (10pts) - language (5pts)

Report - technical depth of the report (30pts) - conclusion (5pts) - layout/format/structure/grammar (10pts) - using appropriate references (5pts) - group coordination and teamwork (5pts)

55%

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