Shaping software quality-the quantitative way

The paper starts with a brief introduction of the theoretical concepts related to software quality, digresses into a broader area of software reliability and tries to augment the broad guidelines of ISO 9000 in encouraging discipline in the software development process. With the advent of a hi-tech era and growing concern over liberalisation and TQM sufficient light has been thrown on software faults leading to failures, white space used to pen down failure intensity as an alternative for quantification of reliability. A case study giving illustrative results using real application data has been conducted to make the various issues related to quality transparent to our brethren (children of software engineering). Several examples amplifying the essence of various relevant themes, use of software reliability measurement techniques in various fields and how to plan for attaining reliability objectives accompany the authors ideas through the paper. Finally the paper concludes with a blow to the "seat of the pants" engineering approach, highlighting the quantitative approach to software quality which can only help in making informed decisions to make this earth a safer place in this universe of hard realities.