Generic Assessments & Reviews

Most software quality management systems and well formed software development methods call for assessments and reviews as part of the process. The nature of these varies depending upon the process. Common types include reviews of individual documents / artifacts and reviews of baseline sets of items such as a critical design review.

There are two aspects to reviews. One aspect is the form and contents of work products be they documents or analysis models. This aspect looks at issues such as the completeness, structure and presentation of the work product. A second aspect is the intellectual content contained within one or more work products. Examples are the proposed behaviour of the system or the architecture of the system ( the organisation of components and how they cooperate ) .  Generally reviews with a wide intellectual scope:

• Consider information contained in a larger number of work products.
• Look in less detail at the work products themselves.

Whereas a review focusing on a particular work product:

• Will have a limited intellectual scope.
• Will look at the work product in detail.

Effective quality control within a software development process requires both types of reviews.  Work products must be reviewed to check that local design is correct, that sufficient information is recorded and that it is communicated clearly. Big picture topic based reviews of behaviour, architecture and internal operational patterns are necessary to ensure that the system is coherent and adequate. These big picture issues are not addressed by work product based reviews.

SQC Capabilities

We have extensive experience of leading and participating in reviews across a wide variety of systems. We can provide rigorous assessments of the consistency, completeness and clarity of documentation and design information. SQC can support an organisation procuring an IT / Software system in ensuring that specifications and documentation is adequate before placing a contract on a supplier.

Our areas of expertise include:

• Assessment of requirements packages to confirm aspects such as completeness, consistency, clarity, testability.
• Assessment of requirements packages for adequacy - would a system be fit for purpose?
• Assessment of functional definitions for compliance with requirements.
• Assessment of architectural designs - is the architecture sound and appropriate?
• Assessment of component / module specifications.