Software Testing: Coloring the Boxes from Black to White

In my last article, I have dealt with the virtually never-ending battle between manual testing and automated testing. Today, let us leave that debate in its place and create a new fracas in the world of software testing – let us try to bridge the gap between white box and black box testing.

Last year, a chance encounter with one of my cousins landed me in a remote, underdeveloped locality. Actually, this cousin of mine was a field reporter by profession and was on duty – investigating a murder case, which took place the previous night and I was just accompanying him with the sole interest of exploring a reporter’s day-to-day life.

As we proceeded in our search for the truth and began questioning the localities randomly, I was taken aback by the narrations of the people we questioned. I mean, none of the stories matched each other exactly and it was difficult for me to draw a clear picture of the actual incident. It almost reminded me the story “The blind men and the elephant” wherein each blind man described the elephant according to his own perspective.

Nevertheless, my companion was a seasoned professional and it just took him a couple of hours to filter the diverse stories and bring out the relevant information, which exactly matched with the police report who joined us in a while. Now, what’s the moral of the story and why the hell am I telling you this story when I was supposed to be igniting an intense debate between white box and black box testing?

Actually, what I want to convey is that one single perspective can never provide you a full, accurate picture of a given event or incident and it does not necessarily require blind men to have widely different perspectives over the same matter. And this is true not only with events or incidents, but also with software systems.

Testing computer software is one such activity in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) in which having concurrent views of the software system is an absolute must. The 4+1 view model of software architecture bears a testimony to this fact. This model explains how no single type of test provides us ample information to quantify the quality of a software system and how we must subject the “box” (software system) to multiple types of software tests to ensure that the final software meets the desired quality standards.

Black box testing and white box testing are the two broad categories of software testing that together can give the testers a much better perspective on system quality. But set them apart, and neither of them can boast of being the sole leader in the software testing arena.

The concept of black box testing is analogous to its literal meaning because it obtrudes the intricacies of the software system from the tester. The tester accesses only the interfaces exposed by the system and tests whether the system is running flawlessly. Testing the software using this procedure provides various benefits, which are as follows:
• Ensures that the software conforms to its customer’s requirements specification.
• Ensures that all the software components are perfectly integrated to produce the desired output.
• The time required to perform the test is minimal.
• It does not require a software engineer to perform the tests.

However, black box testing has one serious demerit. Being architecture independent, it simply cannot determine the efficiency of the code nor does it guarantee that every line of code has been tested. And this is where white box testing scores higher.

When white box testing is allocated enough time and resources, you can bet that every line of code has been tested and you can also ascertain the code’s relative efficiency. Not only that, with white box testing you can also identify the errors that are not explicitly and instantly exposed by the software system.

Thus, you see, that my idea of relating software testing to the story of widely different viewpoints was not at all a fruitless one. In fact, it is because of the widely different procedures of white box and black box testing that you get the perfect result only when you united them together – “United we stand, divided we fall” seems to be the slogan of these two testing methodologies that must be bridged for the larger interests of software testing.

Project Management ? An Insight into the Vicious Circle
My last post on the same topic briefly highlighted the problems encompassing software development projects and also suggested the remedies implementing which a project manager would be able to bring alacrity to the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Today, I would like to take this opportunity to give you an insight into more specific aspects of a software project and help you understand the vicious circle of complexity related to a software project.

Software, as I mentioned earlier, is complex by its very nature itself. Similar to our own human body, software is actually a collection of various components or modules, which together form the whole software and just like our human body, proper functioning of the software requires each and every component to be in perfect shape. Managing the entire software project such that each component of the software is perfect in its own terms and is tightly integrated to the whole system is the real challenge or ‘complexity’ – whatever you call it.

However, the misery of the project managers does not end here. What makes software project management even more complex is the fact that today’s software market, bespoke software is on high demand. With bespoke or custom software development services on demand, the software industry has flourished like anything and there has been enough reason to develop new software every time for new clients.

But on the negative side, the bespoke software implemented at the client sites have always been subjected to changes after implementation, just to satisfy some new requirements. As a result of these changes the bespoke software continue to grow in magnitude and so do the costs of maintaining software and of course, the complexity of the software.

In such situations, software does seem an uncontrollable behemoth and compel the management to contemplate on outsourcing the system management tasks, running the software unchecked in the end-users department, or develop the software afresh from scratch. But software project management is not about surrendering to adversities, it is more about taking the think positive – be optimistic approach. And indeed if you look deeply into the matter you will almost always come up finding the crux of the problem.

In this case the compounding problem of complexity is a vicious circle phenomenon that occurs after bespoke software is implemented at a client site. The circular phenomenon is a result of a few events, which are as follows:
1. At first, the bespoke software is implemented at the client site.
2. The client demands some changes in the software to make it more customized.
3. More resources new resources are added to meet the client requirements.
4. Resources, being new act on their own without following a consistent standard.
5. Poor communication among the new and old resources makes the project less manageable and adds to the complexity.

Thus, the problem of compounding complexity lies not in the size of the software but with the lack of proper standards and way of communication among the resources involved with the project. Analogous to the Industrial Revolution wherein standardization of basic terminologies was required for the growth of industrial enterprises, we need standards to be followed during software development as well.

Standardization along with establishment of proper channels of communication is indeed the right solution to the compounding problem of software complexity. In other words, to break the vicious circle affecting project management, what is needed is a resource centric approach to project management so that resources involved with the software project are managed effectively through standardization and proper communication.

The Worth of Digitization
In my last post on digitization, I discussed how digital content helps us to bridge the digital divide and secure digital dividends in the process. Today, I would like to get deeper into the world of digitization and explore the issues related to this domain.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Truly, technology has taken us so far that we can now see those things, which were initially invisible to us, hear things, which were once beyond our audio senses, and look forward to new possibilities in the near future.

Digitization is one such technology that endeavors to provide meaningful content on human culture, science, and art to all e-citizens. The world’s libraries, museums, and archives are tremendous sources of knowledge, much of which has never seen the light of the day. As Tagore puts it “…Where knowledge is free…into that heaven of freedom my father, let my country awake” – digitization helps you get in touch with the treasure hidden inside the sources of knowledge.

Before proceeding any further in this context, I must explain what I mean by the term, digitization. In a single phrase, we can define digitization as the conversion of analog media to digital form. However, digitization in itself has many facets - the source material can be printed text, images, audio, or video.

With the digital content industry gaining pace with every new second, the possibilities seem endless, the advantages become clearly visible, and the pressure of using this new technology for preservation purposes is increasing at a brisk pace. However, when it comes to digitizing organizational data for preservation purpose, ‘accuracy’ is the word and implementation of state-of-the-art digitization technologies, such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), double-entry capture, and computerized data verification becomes a must.

The accuracy factor notwithstanding, there are some other issues as well that must be considered before venturing into the digitization sea with full-fledged resources. You need to consider:
? The purpose of the digitization project, whether it is for preservation, access improvement, or both.
? The scope of accessibility of the digitized products.
? The desired format of the final output.

As if the above impediments were not enough, after becoming clear about the expectations from the digitization project, you need to decide whether digitization is really worth it? I mean, you need to perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the digitization process positively influences the Return on Investment (ROI). The need for this cost-benefit analysis arises because you have to face the choice between launching a digitization project and investing on other activities, such as traditional collection development.

The fact that makes this cost-benefit analysis process even more difficult is that the number of caveats and variables that must be taken into account is bewildering and at the same time, there is no guarantee that these variables reflect the true cost of the project. However, as an answer to these difficulties, there are several benefits, which make digitization worth it. Increasing access, preservation, and meeting strategic goals are just a few benefits to name with respect to digitization.

So, deciding the worthiness of a digitization project is a tough task and it all depends on how well you can compare digitization with other areas of collection development that may yield better results – always keeping in mind that the primary objective is to meet the requirements of the users and provide them with the resources indispensable for them.

Network Outsourcing

In my last post I have dealt with the fact how the citizens of the developed nations feel that outsourcingis all about corporate greed and how India has metamorphosed from being an underdog in the global business arena to being the invincible in the IT outsourcingsector by compelling the so-called market leaders to have a taste of defeat in the grueling business competition.

My views may have seemed somewhat vehement or biased but what I wrote was as per the fact and figures. And as I concluded with the words that IT services outsourcingshall prevail in the near future, there was left enough scope to discuss about how this shall happen. Isn’t it?

So, taking the subject further, this time I would like to throw some light upon how in the outsourcing sector itself India is gradually conquering laurels and thereby setting higher standards for itself, each time and how India is striving to establish the fact that cost efficiency and quality are not mutually exclusive. The latest feather that India has added to its cap is better known as network outsourcing.

The rapidly falling cost of communications hardware has triggered the upgradation of networks of organizations on a large scale just to take the advantage of better performance and new features. However, on the flip side, there has been a steep rise in the cost of management of these new, complex networks, thereby bothering again the outsourcing sector for a cost-effective solution.

Outsourcing network services to India is still in a nascent stage. Nevertheless, the Indian soil has already witnessed the existence of some quality players in this segment also who are ready to face and overpower the formidable opponents in the likes of IBM, NCR, Compaq, and HP. Moreover, the already established Indian giants in the outsourcing sector have also sowed the seeds for network services by running network operations centers for global clients.

Analogous to all other services outsourced to India, outsourcing network services have also been subjected to controversies and resistance from the developed nations. However, even with security related apprehensions looming large over the fate of outsourced networked services, key players like Wipro, Infosys, and Bangalore labs are paving the way for others to follow by building their skills in this area and offering great value to companies wishing to outsource their network management services.

With the network infrastructure services market growing at a steady rate of 26% annually there is enough reason for the SMBs also to venture into this sea of lucrative prospects. However, there is still a long way to go before the Indian companies make a dent in the global market and for that, the Indian companies need to address some major concerns, which might provide hindrance to their quest for excellence in the network services domain. The concerns include:

? Security: In order to counter this concern, the veteran players are placing in stringent security rules to guarantee confidentiality and safeguard against any theft of information.
? Quality: The Indian companies are effectively dealing with this concern by following quality practices designed for catering to global clients.
? Changing mindsets: This concern pertains to the fear among some companies who are not comfortable outsourcing network security management offshore. The Indian companies are dealing with this concern by alleviating their fear by combining onsite and offshore management before moving completely offshore.

The way these Indian companies have researched to find the right formula for providing network services overseas and the way these companies are consistently refining their own formula, none can blindfold oneself to overlook the enormous amount of potential in outsourcing network management services to India. It is just a matter of time before India again shines with another new jewel on its crown.

Professional Consulting
Professional Consulting: The Escalating Dimension of the Service Sector

Competition began with life itself but for millions of years, natural biological competition involved no strategy or idea. The laws of probability used to govern the competition and competitors naturally found the combination of resources that best suited their needs.

However, as somebody has rightly said that an invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come, today’s business competition does not follow the laws of natural selection. With businesses striving to beat the cutthroat market competition and to find a foothold in the ever-changing marketplace, professional consulting has evolved as one such idea whose time has come.

Truly, now it’s a time when knowledge needs to be set free so that at least in terms of knowledge there remains no difference between the haves and have-nots. And this is what professional consulting is all about.

More specifically, professional consulting is basically a knowledge transfer process wherein the practitioner’s technical skills, education, observations, experience, and knowledge is brought to the limelight so that the world benefits from these valuable assets. Professional consulting does set knowledge free, but like all good things professional consulting does not itself come for free.

In fact, professional consulting is the most expensive and desirable commodity in the services sector and is sold under different names, such as quality consulting servicesquality consulting services, IT consulting services, and software consulting services. However, the domain wherein professional consulting is required most is software implementation.

With software becoming more and more useful, its implementation is becoming increasingly difficult. Moreover, since innumerable software is hitting the market these days, it has also become difficult to select the right software for the right purpose. And one cannot ignore the fact that in today’s business world one wrong decision can spell doom. Therefore, before making huge investment in a particular solution, businesses always prefer to get the right advice from the right people. And the right people are the professional consultants who help these businesses leverage their software investment.

For example, consider the case of ERP implementations. The ERP market is flooded with packages from numerous vendors and some of them like SAP, BAAN and Oracle are too big to be neglected. Each of these ERP vendors would promise to streamline your entire business process but reality is that only one or two would fulfill your exact needs.

It is therefore that you need the help of an ERP consultant who can study your business process and guide you to the right product. But let me tell you that your quest for streamlining your business process does not simply end here. You need to integrate the innumerous modules of your selected ERP package into all your business processes so that the flow of information across your organization is seamless. And believe me you cannot do this without the ERP consultant guiding you at every stage.

Apart from implementation, another important domain where professional consulting has made a mark is quality. With every business desiring to enhance their business processes and improve their productivity, professional consulting has become a must. Professional consulting helps these businesses pursue the various quality standards such as ISO, CMM and Six Sigma.

An important aspect of the term “professional consulting” is that “professional” and “consulting” are actually two different and yet very similar services. The difference becomes clear when the same company provides both professional and consulting services. In such a case consulting service refers to the generic service wherein a consulting group of the organization interact with the customers to throw light on the various products offered by the organization whereas professional service refers to the product-specific technical support services provided by the organization.

However, the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t really matter whether professional consulting refers to the same thing or two different things. Reality is that professional consulting has opened the floodgates for knowledge transfer and at the same time it has provided yet another new and exciting dimension to the service sector.

Data Mining
Data Mining: Unearthing Hidden Business Treasures

Unearthing hidden treasures has always been a passion - an obsession - for the humankind and the greater the difficulty in obtaining a substance, the greater is the regarded value of that substance. Such is this obsession that not even the IT sector has been spared from it. And data mining is the legal name given to this obsession.

To be precise, data mining is a self-explanatory term wherein “mine” refers to the data warehouse, which contains raw data and the process of digging into this mine to extract relevant data is what we call data mining. Now, isn’t that analogous to digging a coal mine or a gold mine to extract the prized material?

The answer is NO. And the reason is that a data warehouse is not a natural mine that could be reduced to a cipher through regular consumption. On the contrary, by virtue of the availability of immense storage space at low costs, the wealth of this artificial mine, data warehouse, increases with time. And this what makes data mining even more important.

So, data mining is not equivalent to gold mining, however, there is one more theory that could perhaps perfectly explain the importance of data mining in the business world. And the theory is -history repeats itself.

Yes, when it comes to analyzing business, no one can deny that past data is extremely important. It is because, more often than not, customers are destined to behave in a manner as they did earlier and understanding the customer mentality is what business analysis is all about. Moreover, an intelligent view of the past data does enable you to form an opinion about what the future market trends would be and how you should change your business processes to remain alive in the competition.

The evolution of this phenomenal concept, data mining, is a result of a long, dedicated research and product development supported by technologies, such as SAN and NAS, which facilitate storage and access to large volumes of data. The maturity of these technologies, coupled with high-performance relational database engines, makes data mining a practical idea.

Powered by sophisticated algorithms and hardware technologies that support massive data collection and complex processing, data mining is now on the verge of being applied in the business community on a large scale.

More recently, the IT sector has given birth to technologies that allows users navigate through business data in real time. And data mining capitalizes on these technical breakthroughs to take its evolution beyond retrospective data access and navigation to proactive information delivery.

Data mining, in collaboration with data analysisdata analysis and business intelligence, provides a method for users to anticipate future trends from analyzing past patterns in organizational data. An implementation of data mining software in your organization will help you uncover inherent trends and tendencies in historical information and will provide room for statistical predictions, groupings, and classifications of data.

With accurate knowledge about the trends and tendencies solving business decision-making problems becomes a lot easier and you are placed in a position wherein you can take proactive and knowledge driven decisions.

For all the benefits that it brings in, data mining can easily be regarded as an effective business solution. Ironically though, it is not so. Data mining is just another technology that extends statistics and embraces a few artificial intelligence and machine learning twists.

Process Implementation
Process Implementation: A Quest for the Right Direction

Like the dawn of a new civilization, the SMBs have woken up in an entire new world, which was earlier considered to be the empire of the ruling Fortune 500 companies only. Thanks to the unyielding market competition and the vendors of ERP and CRM software packages. The SMBs are now compelled to contemplate on how to improve their organizational processes and how to implement the industry best practices.

In pursuit of the right system that would help identify the risks and make good business case, many SMBs have had to become a part of the tales of lost millions and withdrawals after implementation. These SMBs have made significant investments in increasingly complex IT infrastructure and application services, but never lived to enjoy the success. And ignorance is perhaps the term that best defines the reason for such failures.

Ignorance in terms of cost incurred, in terms of time required, in terms of changes required… whatever, all are equally responsible for those lost millions. Moreover, the vendors themselves are not helping the cause and why should they? After all, they need to sell their products, isn’t it? These vendors do highlight the benefits of their software but seldom do they tell you about the actual costs to be incurred or the impacts that the implementation process would make on your business.

Nevertheless, each SMB must anticipate that the implementation process will be bigger than what was imagined and the existing environmental mix between manual and automated processes will swing dramatically after the implementation. The degree of automation would increase and would cause a significant change in the corporate culture.

This change will not only affect the employees but also the way the organization works. For example, a CRM implementation would require each employee to understand the basic CRM process and visualize the goal that needs to be achieved through the CRM implementation. Similarly, an ERM implementation will require the employees to shift their focus from their own job to the whole organization. Likewise, the implementation process might change the organizational behavior from being flexible to being obsessed with details and would almost always try to change the business processes.

Bottom line is that the process of implementation is no doubt a complex one because it is composed of a number of processes, technology, and people. It is basically a transformation process that touches every part of your business, including the supply chain, the front-end systems, and the back-end reporting. Therefore, it is important to organize and shape the implementation process right from the scratch and establish information links among the front office, back office, and other departments long before the implementation process starts.

To be more specific, a software implementation process will reach its destination through the right direction only when the following tasks are performed in an appropriate manner:

? Confirmation of business needs: Involves understanding the exact business needs by applying cumulative experience from relevant industry sectors.
? Design and specification: Involves tailoring the solution to the precise business needs.
? Application installation: Involves installing the application using the existing organizational database.
? Application training: Involves knowledge transfer related to managing and maintaining the application.
? Implementation testing: Involves ensuring that the solution addresses the business needs.
? Report design: Involves designing and building dynamic reports.
? Technical support: Involves providing help desk support from a single point of contact.

Notwithstanding all the problems associated with implementation processes, the speed with which today’s businesses have to adapt to ever-changing circumstances does demand for automation of the business processes. And for that matter, the preceding task list actually serves as a carefully planned change programme that facilitates the quest for the right direction when it comes to process implementation.

Software Testing
Test Automation vs. Manual Testing: The Battle Continues…

The letter ‘t’ in the term “testing” bears paramount significance when we talk in terms of software products. Its because, “testing” and “time” go hand in hand and no software tester in this world can deny that an additional bit of time could have helped him produce better results. And its not that whining about the lack of time has become a habit for these software testers, rather it’s an unfortunate truth that software testing is the SDLC phase that gets the least amount of time and attention.

The fact that software development projects normally follows an iterative approach, makes it extra difficult for the software testers to execute their tasks correctly and efficiently. Although the iterative approach helps the developers mend the fissures in their software, it certainly makes life difficult for the testers by piling up the testing debts.

With each iteration, the testers have to test lot more than what they tested in the previous iteration and that too within a reduced time frame. As a result the testers are compelled to sacrifice one or other form of software testing thereby increasing the risk of bug presence in the final product.

Under such circumstances, test automation does seem to be the silver bullet solution, providing immense reductions in the amount of time required in executing the tests. For example, in a recent survey, it was found that test automation could manage to condense five days of manual testing effort into one hour of automated execution thereby causing a 97.5% reduction in execution time.

Software, since its birth, has always been cursed by the “change” factor. It’s a common belief that the software code can be easily changed and thus the customers change their requirements frequently as the software develops. Seldom do they understand that such changes add complexities to the software and it takes a hell lot of effort on the part of the testers to perform regression testing to ensure that no bugs are added as a result of the changes.

When it comes to regression testing, there can be no better solution than test automation. Instead of testing the only area around the changes, test automation allows you to test the entire software after modification using less time and resources.

Now, does that mean that manual testing of computer software stand nowhere near test automation? The answer is NO. Along with all its virtues, test automation has its own limitations and cost is one of them. Just like an ERP package, deploying and configuring an appropriate test automation tools to automate the testing procedures incur huge costs, much more than running the tests manually.

Further, software testing involves some tasks, which can never be automated. For example, tasks, such as inquiry and analysis are not something a machine can do. Even though it is possible to automate some of the testing activities, there is no guarantee that the results will be perfect. And the bigger problem is that, unlike a software feature, it is difficult to identify whether the result produced by the test automation software is inaccurate. Ironically enough, it’s the tester who is made the scapegoat every time the results go wrong because of the ill-built test automation software.

The fact of the matter is test automation in itself is a misnomer simply because it requires a human being to select the right tool for the right purpose and also verify the results. Test automation just helps the human testers perform their task more effectively. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the fact that the nature of software testing process and the time allocated for the purpose does demand for some kind of automation.

Digitization
Digitization – Linking Digital Divide with Digital Dividend

It is really surprising that throughout the course of history there have been severe differences among people or nations for whatsoever reasons. Sometimes it was the skin color that bothered the Americans for years and hindered their progress. Thereafter, it was the Berlin wall, which notably epitomized the difference among people. And now, it’s technology itself, which is being held responsible for differences among the lesser mortals.

The fact that various geographic, socioeconomic, and cultural subpopulations in today’s world have widely varying access to a range of digital technologies has engaged political, intellectual, and business leaders in a vigorous and far-ranging debate under the topic – digital divide.

The debate encompasses multiple perspectives ranging from providing the lesser-developed nations with broader access to the Internet to simply allowing the market forces run their course. And digital divide is not just a futile discussion among the so-called intellectuals rather it was a prominent agenda item at the annual G8 summit of the world’s leading industrial countries.

The Globalists project digital divide as a proof that the United States is digitally isolating itself from the rest of the world, while the Digital Democrats demand cyber-democracy, and the Digital Egalitarians want to mandate equal access to technological tools throughout all strata of society.

Truly, the problem of digital divide must be addressed, but one needs to understand that merely providing Internet access to every e-citizen will not shut the mouths of the Digital Democrats and Egalitarians forever because the stakes are much greater.

More than government involvement, what is required to seal this digital divide, is the active participation of the business community in mending the fissures. And believe me, I am not calling for any charity work. Bridging the digital gap will enable businesses to thrive at a new level of post-industrial innovation and will produce better-trained, more productive employees apart from opening up new sales and marketing opportunities.

The emergence of electronic marketplace as the hub of domestic and global e-commerce will further lure businesses to help close the digital divides. In addition, the spread of digital technologies will offer an opportunity to meet the ever-changing consumer demands and create innovative products and services.

Thus, involving the private sector in the “bridging digital divide” effort will not only pursue the end result, but will also benefit the businesses with “digital dividends”. And it is not that I am throwing an out-of-the-box idea rather I am just highlighting the importance of digitization.

Businesses have already realized the benefits of promoting widespread use of digital technologies. Wireless communications through satellites, digital content management, broadband network access, and many such digital technologies are inexorably converging. Within corporations, managers are quickly closing the digital proficiency gap between high and low skilled employees. In the United States, the corporate sector is helping the education system to prepare students to work in a digital economy.

Likewise, I can go on mentioning the facts and benefits related to digital technologies and digitization, and still I must say that here I am just discussing the role of digitization in bridging the digital gap. Its because, digitization, in its entirety has many facets and a complete discussion on the real potential of digitization encompassing its role in information exchange, preservation and dissemination would perhaps cover the length of an entire book.

However, what can be most the appropriate conclusion of this discussion is the fact that its unity in diversity, which keeps this world going. And the bottom-line of the above discussion is that like all other differences witnessed by history, the difference caused due to digital divide can also be overcome provided, the technologists, Egalitarians, Globalists, and free-market adherents agree upon linking the digital divide with digital dividend.

Software Quality
Software Quality – Part and Parcel of ROI

With all the software companies, from start-ups to the big fishes, vying for some or the other kind of quality standards certifications, software quality has certainly become the buzzword in the global IT industry and it is emerging as an in vogue stream. Jargons like ISO 9000:2000, CMM, PCMM, and Six Sigma are being sought after like never before.

But just refresh your memories and peek at the previous years of the software industry. You will observe that software quality has traditionally been viewed as a non-technical field and has mostly been shunned by the IT professionals. Then, why this change?

As you must believe, “change” is the only constant in this world and this shift in focus to software quality has been chiefly due to the stiff competition in the software market.

Gone are the days when software and automation was a craze. Automation has now become a necessity and consumers now want maximum returns on their IT investment. In a market where every other software company boasts of providing the “right” software at the “right” price, quality is the only the factor that distinguishes the original from the replica.

Going deeper in this context, I must say that quality of the purchased software is not a concern for the customized products only. Even off-the shelf products from major vendors are not exempted from the assault of this daemon.

For example, if you continue adding files to a new project in Microsoft SourceSafe, the software will present you a dialog box informing you that it is not permissible to add more than 150 files to a single project. This dialog box will ask you whether you wish to continue and will display three buttons: Yes, No, and Help. Now, if you click the Help button you will be shocked with the message “TOPIC NOT FOUND”. ( http://www.robfisher.net/blog/archive/2003/06/)

Can you believe it? If the God of all software, Microsoft, can make mistakes, why can’t others? And this is the reason why software quality has gained paramount importance.

Unfortunately enough, software quality assurance doesn’t always get its due attention and whenever a software project is late, which almost always happens, software testing is the first thing that gets curbed or removed from the project task list. And this is the reason why more and more organizations are opting for an effective management system for quality process implementation that can direct a unit and control the organization with regard to software quality.

But the biggest dilemma with software quality is that there can be no single, universally accepted definition of quality. Another hindrance is the assumption that the “process improvement” mantra will lead to a successful product.

Therefore, it is important for any software company to formalize its own definition of software quality so that consumers or clients can relate that definition of quality to their own. The software companies should also consider product assessment along with process improvement to ensure appropriate quality of the final product.

Assessing software quality may be extremely intricate and the state of practice might fall short of expectations, but with the ongoing global research on next generation techniques for software quality assessment, all is not lost. The only need of the hour is procure professionals with complete knowledge of software engineering practices and methods who can focus on the quality factor right from the beginning of the software projects.

With software systems being increasingly deployed in areas affecting our daily lives, the implications of failure of such critical systems can range from annoying inconveniences to life-threatening consequences. Add to it, the desirable software qualities of maximized ROI, customer satisfaction, and cost-effective pricing. Under these circumstances, the bets fitting statement could possibly be - quality is no longer an option, rather the option is to ensure quality or consign your organization to failure.