Software quality function deployment

Any product development involves projecting its potential success in achieving its functional and commercial goals. Better quality designs that match customer needs and preferences and integrate other lifecycle issues early in the software development process are more likely to be competitive. Thus, there is significant concern in industry about quality product design, which is addressed by quality function deployment (QFD). QFD uses matrices to organize and relate pieces of data to each other. These matrices are often combined to form a basic tool of QFD, called a House of Quality (HoQ). QFD was developed in the Kobe shipyards as a way to expand and implement the view of quality as taught by W. Edwards Deming and others. It has been widely applied in many industries worldwide, such as automobile, electronics, food processing, computer hardware and software ever since. Software quality function deployment (SQFD) focuses on improving the quality of both the software development process and the product. The improvement in software quality leads to fewer changes in requirements specification, design, and code, a reduction in the number of defects and less rework, and therefore, higher productivity.