Software Quality Management Standards and Models

This chapter presents the software process improvement (SPI) aspects of quality management standards and their methodologies. It focuses on the scope of three major certification and assessment standards followed by two additional software quality management methodologies: TickIt and Bootstrap. The concept of SPI seeking to achieve process improvement throughout the software life cycle corresponds well to the software quality assurance principle of continuous improvement. The ISO/IEC 90003 presents implementation of the general methodology of quality management of ISO 9001 standards for the special case of software development and maintenance. The ISO 9001 standards deal with development, production, and services and maintenance of a product. The ISO/IEC 90003 certification process verifies that an organization's software development and maintenance processes fully comply with the standard's requirements. Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute took the initial steps toward the development of a capability maturity model, when it released the first brief description of the maturity process framework.