Industrial software quality

Talking about quality is often too abstract. It seems easier to approach the question of quality through non-quality. Everyone has seen the effects of non-quality in everyday life or in the workplace. The consequences are as much in terms of costs and deadlines as in terms of people and goods.

As an example for the general public, the SNCF's Socrate software, which took a long time to implement, greatly complicated the lives of users and commuters, and deeply damaged the company's image. The example of the first Ariane 5 launch also comes to mind. These two events are well known to everyone, due to their extensive media coverage, but many other examples are encountered every day by everyone.

There is still a widespread mindset in the software industry that quality costs too much, delays development, etc., and the decision to produce the product (executable) first and then the rest (documentation, testing, etc.) according to the time remaining is still very often the case.

In fact, quality is not a precise entity delimited at a given moment in the development process, but must be an integral part of the way we are, and must take place throughout the product life cycle.

It's worth pointing out that industrial sectors such as the aeronautics industry, which develop safety-related software, have long been implementing methods that meet the need for rigor and therefore quality. The emergence of standards has made it possible to quantify everyone's needs and expectations, and serve as a reference during the acceptance phase.

In recent years, the concept of total quality has come onto the market. Companies wishing to catch up have embarked on a quest for improvement through ISO 9000, CMM, SPICE and other standards. These approaches are far from negative, and their contributions are more than positive. However, there have been some bitter failures, most often due to a lack of internal communication within the company. Forcing the entire workforce to move forward, without explanation and without taking their point of view into account, is a recipe for failure. The implementation of a quality system specific to a company, or to a given sector, if it is well understood and appropriate, can only be positive.

To facilitate the approach, and with a view to standardization, it seems simplest to take the software life cycle and review all the processes that make it up, to highlight the quality points. The international standard ISO 12207 "Software Lifecycle Processes" can serve as a framework for the remainder of this presentation. This standard groups the activities to be carried out during the software life cycle into five core processes, eight supporting processes and four organizational...