EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF QUALITY ASSURANCE IN CMMI LEVEL 2 FOR COMPLIANCE

Abstract

The cost of software errors or problems as a result of quality lapse is a major difficulty to the software industry at large, to the developers of the Software as well its clients. The task of improving quality is therefore vital. This thesis stands as a guideline for defining a model supporting Quality assurance program for CMMI level 2 certified company projects, by doing the empirical analysis of a CMMI Level 2 software project. In this maneuver, proposing a model for the assurance of quality, facilitating organizational strategy toward process and project improvement and achieving the quality objectives is the main focus. The whole model, after a complete fulfillment, would provide the organization with a guideline to achieve the organizational quality assurance objectives. It is vital to mention that this template itself does not improve the processes. It only shows the status of the chosen project/process after having the filled template executed. What this template generates is to provide the stakeholders with necessary information and basis to make informed decision afterwards in order to improve the chosen processes/projects. Since the processes in “Maturity Level 2 of CMMI” are project based, it is important that the status of processes quality be assured. This procedure plays a crucial role in creating a platform for moving to the next maturity level. This research is dual process; firstly an empirical study of the projects is done and then based on the analysis of that empirical study a model is defined to make quality assurance better in an organization. Based on the approach of Empirical study and proposed model a Tool, one of its kind, Quality Assurance Gap Analyzer (QAGA) is developed, which takes Requirements, Test cases and their status as Input and generates a Report telling the user about the Gaps that exist in each requirement and an overall Gap Analysis of the whole project. It also generates a graph plotting Requirements on the basis of their criticality against the percentages of Gap that exists in them. Results are helpful for the organizations to know the status of their Software Processes, Testing coverage of Requirements and thus a better understanding of Quality Assurance of the product.