Effectiveness of software testing techniques in enterprise: a case study

Transcendental View: 
quality is something that can be recognized through (Garvin, 1984) 

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experience is not defined in some tractable form. 
User View:
quality is as fitness for purpose; the evaluation to which a product satisfy 
user needs and expectations. 
Manufacturing View:
quality is seen as conformance to requirements. 
Product View:
quality is seen as tied to the inherent characteristics of the product. 
Value-Based View:
quality depends on the amount a customer is willing to pay for 
it. 
Quality consists of those product features which meet the needs of customers and 
thereby provide product satisfaction. 
(Juran, 1988) 
Quality consists of freedom from deficiencies. 
The degree to which a system, component, or process meets specified requirements. 
(“IEEE Standard 
Glossary of Software 
Engineering 
Terminology,” 1990) 
The degree to which a system, component, or process meets customer or user needs 
or expectations. 
Software quality is defined as: Conformance to explicitly stated functional and 
performance requirements, explicitly documented development standards, and 
implicit characteristics that are expected of all professionally developed software. 
(Pressman, 2000) 
Prepared by author.
 
The research by Kitchenham & Lawrence (1996) showed that User and Manufacturing views are more 
important comparing with other Garvin's views. Indeed, Manufacturing view is inherited from Crosby 
(1979) and later developed as well as User view which defines the main idea of software quality. On 
the other hand, the more extended term we intend to use. Juran (1988) suggested term fits to describe 
user satisfactions, but the important part, requirements, is missing. Pressman (2000) notes software as 
"professionally developed software", nevertheless it is not clear what criteria determine professionally 
of software in this particular case. Regarding the arguments discussed before, we choose to adopt the 
term by “IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology” (1990) as "Software quality 
- the degree to which a software meets specified requirements and user needs or expectations". 
Furthermore, quality issues as a part of quality assurance process have been analyzed by 
Kitchenham & Lawrence (1996) as well. Quality assurance (hereinafter - QA) is defined as a set of 
planned activities with the purpose of providing an adequate confidence that a software conforms to 
established technical requirements (“IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology,” 
1990). Therefore, the provided quality issues that stand for QA have been ranked by respondents in 
terms of importance respectively: 
1.
specifying quality requirements objectively; 
2.
setting up a quality-management system; 

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3.
achieving operational quality that meets requirements; 
4.
measuring quality achievements;
5.
agreeing with the customer on what quality means. 
In fact, these quality issues depend on context of software complexity, user needs and expectations, 
and they can vary in a different order. This aspect was investigated by McCall et al. (1977) as a 
guideline in how to objectively specify the desired amount of quality at the system requirements 
specification phase and reduce the cost of software development. The research determines the need of 
quality factors which jointly comprise software quality, identification of a set of criteria for each factor 
and application of required metrics for each criterion. Quality factors have been introduced and 
grouped into few categories by different authors: the classic model of software quality factors, 
suggested by McCall et al. (1977), consists of 11 factors, very similar models, consisting of 12 to 15 
factors, were suggested by Deutsch & Willis (1988) and Evans & Marciniak (1987). Quality factors by 
McCall et al. (1977) are grouped into three broad categories, such as product operation, product 
revision, product transition in order to distinguish the relationship between quality factors and software 
development activities. The elements and their definitions (“IEEE Standard Glossary of Software 
Engineering Terminology,” 1990) of each quality category are illustrated in a table below (see Table 2, 
page 13).