QA/QC/QE - Quality's the common thread. So, what is the definition of quality?
In simple terms, Quality is the value to someone. If that isn't enough, here are a few quality definitions.
As per Joseph Juran, quality means fitness for use.
According to Philip Crosby, it means conformance to requirements.
The American Society for Quality gives two meanings - 1. the characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs; 2. a product or service free of deficiencies.
Quality is not exactly a uni-dimensional attribute. On the contrary Quality may be considered to comprise a set of attributes. For example, when purchasing a computer for personal use, one would look for the price, processor(s), memory, storage, type of storage (SSDs vs HDDs), display, OS, brand, model, etc. All of the different attributes of a computer may together be considered as its quality attributes.
For software, there are several quality attributes. Some of the important ones include -
Accuracy/correctness
Robustness and failure handling ability
Performance - latency, throughput
Resource usage
Capacity
Scalability
Reliability
MTBF (Mean time between failure)
Integrity
Availability
Security (includes MTTD, MTTE)
Configurability
Internationalizablity
Localizability
Customizability
Interoperability
Compatibility
Usability - intuitive, consistent UIs, simple and clean designs
Cost
Maintainability
Upgrade-ability and patching capabilities
Migration support
Platform support
Ability to integrate with existing systems if/as needed
Note these do not include the code & design level quality attributes such as standards compliance, modular designs, reusability, testability, sustainability, ability to modify code easily to changing requirements, etc.
In simple terms, Quality is the value to someone. If that isn't enough, here are a few quality definitions.
As per Joseph Juran, quality means fitness for use.
According to Philip Crosby, it means conformance to requirements.
The American Society for Quality gives two meanings - 1. the characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs; 2. a product or service free of deficiencies.
Quality is not exactly a uni-dimensional attribute. On the contrary Quality may be considered to comprise a set of attributes. For example, when purchasing a computer for personal use, one would look for the price, processor(s), memory, storage, type of storage (SSDs vs HDDs), display, OS, brand, model, etc. All of the different attributes of a computer may together be considered as its quality attributes.
For software, there are several quality attributes. Some of the important ones include -
Accuracy/correctness
Robustness and failure handling ability
Performance - latency, throughput
Resource usage
Capacity
Scalability
Reliability
MTBF (Mean time between failure)
Integrity
Availability
Security (includes MTTD, MTTE)
Configurability
Internationalizablity
Localizability
Customizability
Interoperability
Compatibility
Usability - intuitive, consistent UIs, simple and clean designs
Cost
Maintainability
Upgrade-ability and patching capabilities
Migration support
Platform support
Ability to integrate with existing systems if/as needed
Note these do not include the code & design level quality attributes such as standards compliance, modular designs, reusability, testability, sustainability, ability to modify code easily to changing requirements, etc.
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