Plenary Lecture
QFD in Software Development: A New Perspective
Professors Monica Leba & Andreea Ionica
University of Petrosani
ROMANIA
Email: monicaleba@yahoo.com
Abstract: The well-known opinions of several authors have suggested that the quality improvement programs based on a TQM (Total Quality Management) philosophy may be able to meet the needs for quality oriented development in software engineering. In software engineering the software development process is based on a type of lifecycle. No matter the type of lifecycle used for a certain software application development, the starting and crucial point is always the correct and thorough capture of the client’s requirements. From the techniques and methods that improve the quality of requirements including the client participation we focused on QFD (Quality Function Deployment), considering that QFD is a requirements engineering approach that focuses on quality. So, during the first phase of the software lifecycle the client requests are captured and processed by the software analysts’ team. The results are a first category of inputs for the built QFD model. From the next phase, that is the design phase, results the quality characteristics of the software product. These are the second category of inputs for the QFD model. The correlations between the quality characteristics are identified in the coding phase. These correlations reflect the degree of interdependence between the software modules. In the testing phase there are determined the accomplishment degrees of the requests by the quality characteristics depending on the functionality of the achieved modules. In the end, the delivery and maintenance phase of the software product, there is achieved the comparative analysis with other similar software products both from the point of view of the client and from the technical point of view. Based on this QFD model there can be computed how much the achieved software product meets the expressed or explicit needs of the client. According to the continuous improvement principle, the QFD model is very useful in identifying the quality characteristics that must be improved in order to satisfy as much as possible the client’s requests, this way making it possible to obtain versions of the software product that meet the efficiency criteria. This QFD built model additionally provides a simulation environment based on an own original mathematical model that link the degree of requirements’ accomplishment to the global software improvement, by means of quality characteristics. All the above phases are presented as a software engineering specific template, particularized on a web application example, called M.O.V.E. (My Online Virtual Environment). Having established the use of QFD in software lifecycle, we introduce a 3D spiral meta-model for software development based on the Juran’s quality spiral and on the Boehm’s spiral model. This model consists of several levels, each level actually representing subversions of the software product. We introduce an index that measures the “step” between two versions. This index represents the importance of both the quality characteristics and the clients’ requirements.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Monica Leba: Received a BSc in System Control and Applied Informatics Engineering in 1998, a MSc in Information Systems and Technologies in 2007 and gained a PhD in System Control in 2002. She joined in 1999 the University of Petrosani. In 2008 became Associated Professor of System Control Engineering. She is member of IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control), Technical Committee 3.1. Computers for Control. She is coordinator of the LLP-Erasmus program at the University of Petrosani from 2007. She was Invited Lecturer at the University of Clausthal – Germany, University of Nancy – France and University of Malaga – Spain. Her general research interests are in applied informatics, algorithms design, modelling and simulation, computer and system control engineering. She took part and coordinated about 20 national and international research projects and grants and published about 80 papers, part of them in WSEAS conferences. She also presented two plenary lectures in WSEAS conferences in Corfu, Greece, October, 2008 and in Istanbul, Turkey, June, 2009. Andreea Ionica: Graduated the University of Petrosani as engineer (1992), as economist (2002) and PhD in Industrial Engineering (2004). She got a postgraduate degree in Enterprises’ Economy and Administration from Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, France (1998). She also graduated the course of Human Resources Management (1999). She is currently Associated Professor in the Management Department at University of Petrosani where she teaches mainly in the areas of Management and Quality Management. Her research interests include: Quality Management Systems (QMS), TQM implementation, the study of customer - supplier relationship in the context of the QMS implementation. She activates in the field of quality management systems, being auditor and Quality Management Representative at the University of Petrosani. In the period 2010-2012 she coordinates a Grundtvig project with partners from Turkey, Romania, Nederland, Belgium and Germany. She participated as coordinator or member in about 10 national and international research projects and grants and published about 100 paperses.