IT0025 - Social and Professional Issues

Module 7 - Ethical Decisions in Software Development • develop accurate forecasts of customer

demand,
ST1 - Software Quality • recommend stocks and bonds for an
Intended Learning Outcomes investment portfolio,
– Explain the use of high-quality software in the business • schedule shift workers.
system;
– Enumerate the types of Software Product Liability; and - Software is also used to control many industrial
– Understand the ethical practices of the users. processes.
- Software is also used to control the operation of many
Strategies for Engineering Quality Software industrial and consumer products.
- As a result of the increasing use of computers and
High-quality software systems software in business, many companies are now in the
- easy to learn and use because they perform quickly and software business whether they like it or not.
efficiently;
- meet their users’ needs; and Software Product Liability
- they operate safely and reliably so that system downtime - The liability of manufacturers, sellers, lessors, and
is kept to a minimum. others for injuries caused by defective products is
commonly referred to as product liability.
Software defect - If a software defect causes injury or loss to purchasers,
- is any error that, if not removed, could cause a software lessees, or users of the product, the injured parties may
system to fail to meet its users’ needs. be able to sue as a result.
- Software product liability claims are typically based on
Software quality strict liability, negligence, breach of warranty, or
- the degree to which a software product meets the needs misrepresentation—sometimes in combination with one
of its users another.
- Strict liability means that the defendant is held
Quality Management responsible for injuring another person, regardless of
- focuses on defining, measuring, and refining the quality negligence or intent.
of the development process and the products developed - Negligence is the failure to do what a reasonable person
during its various stages. would do, or doing something that a reasonable person
would not do.
- The objective of quality management is to help - A warranty assures buyers or lessees that a product
developers deliver high-quality systems that meet the meets certain standards of quality.
needs of their users.
- A primary cause of poor software quality is that many Warranty requires that the following standards be met:
developers do not know how to design quality into • The goods must be fit for the ordinary purpose
software from the very start; some simply do not take for which they are used.
the time to do so.
• The goods must be adequately contained,
- To develop high-quality software, developers must packaged, and labeled.
define and follow a set of rigorous software engineering
• The goods must be of an even kind, quality,
principles and be committed to learning from past
and quantity within each unit.
mistakes.
• The goods must conform to any promise or
affirmation of fact made on the container or
The Importance of Software Quality
label.
- A business information system is a set of interrelated
• The quality of the goods must pass without
components—including hardware, software, databases,
objection in the trade.
networks, people, and procedures—that collects and
• The goods must meet a fair average or middle
processes data and disseminates the output.
range of quality.
- Another type of business information system is the
decision support system (DSS), which is used to
improve decision making in a variety of industries.
- If the product fails to meet the terms of its warranty, the
- A DSS can be used to
buyer or lessee can sue for breach of warranty.

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IT0025 - Social and Professional Issues
- Software suppliers frequently write warranties to - Agile development concentrates instead on maximizing
attempt to limit their liability in the event of the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to
nonperformance. emerging requirements.
- Although a certain software application may be
warranted to run on a given machine configuration, Waterfall System Development Model
often no assurance is given as to what that software will
do.

ST2 - Strategies for Developing quality Software

Intended Learning Outcomes

- Understand the essential components of a Software
development methodologies.
– Understand the potential ethical issues do software
manufacturers facing; and
– Understand the ethical practices of the users.

Software Development Methodologies

- Developing information system software is not a
simple process;

- A methodology defines activities in the software • Investigation

development process and the individual and group • Analysis
responsibilities for accomplishing these activities • Design
- A methodology also offers guidelines or managing the • Construction
quality of software during the various stages of • Integration and testing
development. • Implementation

Agile System Development Methodology

Software Development Methodology

• Activities
• Requirements refinement meeting
o Responsibilities
• Prioritized list of system requirements (product backlog)
o Techniques
• Iteration planning session
o Quality guidelines
• Requirements to implement during this iteration
(iteration backlog)
- The waterfall system development model is a sequential, • 1-4 weeks iteration
multistage system development process in which o Daily stand-up meeting
development of the next stage of the system cannot
• Working system of requirements implemented so far
begin until the results of the current stage are approved
• Iteration review meeting
or modified as necessary.
Pros and Cons of Waterfall and agile
- Under the agile development methodology, a system is
developed in iterations (often called sprints) lasting
Waterfall Agile
from one to four weeks.
Pros Cons Pros Cons
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IT0025 - Social and Professional Issues
Formal Often, users’ For It is an • White-box testing treats the software unit as a
review at needs go appropriate intense device that has expected input and output
end of each unstated or are projects, process that behaviors.
stage allows miscommunicate this takes
maximum d or approach considerabl Types of Software Testing
managemen misunderstood. puts an e time and • Static testing - Special software programs
t control. Users may end application effort on called static analyzers are run against new
up with a system int the part of code.
that meets those production project • Integration testing - After successful unit
needs as sooner. members testing, the software units are combined into an
understood by and can integrated subsystem.
the developers; result in • System testing - After successful integration
however, this burnout for testing, the various subsystems are combined
might not be system to test the entire system as a complete entity.
what the users developers • User acceptance testing - Independent testing
really needed. and other is performed by trained end users to ensure
project that the system operates as they expect.
participants
. Key Issues in Software Development
Structured Users can’t Forces Requires - Safety-critical system is one whose failure may cause
processes easily review teamwork stakeholder human injury or death.
produce intermediate and lots of s and users
many products and interaction to spend
- The key to ensuring that these additional tasks are
intermediate evaluate whether between more time
completed is to appoint a system safety engineer, who
products a particular users and working
has explicit responsibility for the system’s safety.
that can be product will lead project together on
used to to a system that stakeholder the project.
- The hazard log is used at each stage of the software
measure meets their s so that
development process to assess how it has accounted for
progress business users are
detected hazards.
toward requirements. more likely
developing to get a
- However, the safety engineer must keep in mind that
the system system that
his or her role is not simply to produce a hazard log
meets their
but rather to influence the design of the system to
needs.
ensure that it operates safely when put into use.
Quality Assurance (QA) - refers to methods within the
- Risk is the potential of gaining or losing something of value.
development process that are designed to guarantee reliable
Risk can be quantified by three elements:
operation of a product.
• a risk event
Software Testing • the probability of the event happening
- Software is developed in units called subroutines or • the impact (positive or negative) on the
programs. business outcome if the risk does actually
- One approach to QA is to test the code for a completed occur
unit of software by actually entering test data and - Risk management is the process of identifying, monitoring, and
comparing the results to the expected results in a process limiting risks to a level that an organization is willing to accept.
called dynamic testing.

There are two forms of dynamic testing:

• Black-box testing involves viewing the
Strategies for addressing a particular risk include the
software unit as a device that has expected
following:
input and output behaviors but whose internal
1. Acceptance - When the cost of avoiding a risk
workings are unknown (a black box).
outweighs the potential loss of a risk, an organization
will likely accept the risk.

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IT0025 - Social and Professional Issues
2. Avoidance - An organization may choose to eliminate
the vulnerability that gives rise to a particular risk in
order to avoid the risk altogether.
3. Mitigation - Risk mitigation involves the reduction in
either the likelihood or the impact of the occurrence of a
risk.
4. Redundancy- is the provision of multiple
interchangeable components to perform a single
function in order to cope with failures and errors.
5. Transference - A common way to accomplish risk
transference is for an individual or an organization to
purchase insurance, such as auto or business liability
insurance.

Reliability is a measure of the rate of failure in a system that

would render it unusable over its expected lifetime

Quality Management Standards

- The International Organization for Standardization
(ISO), founded in 1947, is a worldwide federation of
national standards bodies from 161 countries. The
organization issued its 9000 series of business
management standards in 1988.
- ISO 9001 family of standards serves as a guide to
quality products, services, and management.
- ISO 9001:2008 provides a set of standardized
requirements for a quality management system.
- Over 1 million organizations in more than 175
countries have ISO 9001 certification.

- To obtain this coveted certificate, an organization must

submit to an examination by an external assessor and
must fulfill the following requirements:
• Have written procedures for all processes
• Follow those procedures
• Prove to an auditor that it has fulfilled the first
two requirements; this proof can require
observation of actual work practices and
interviews with customers, suppliers, and
employees.

- Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is an

important technique used to develop ISO 9001-
compliant quality systems by both evaluating reliability
and determining the effects of system and equipment
failures.
- Failure mode describes how a product or process could
fail to perform the desired functions described by the
customer.

References