The Handbook of Software Quality Assurance (3rd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Yet another pedantic, theoretical, inaccessable tome
Review: An awkward compilation of essays heavily weighted towards CMM-based process improvement as it has been practiced within the aerospace industry. The book devotes hundreds of pages to esoteric discussions of standards and models without managing to say much of anything about how to actually *do* quality assurance. Heavily biased towards SEI and the CMM, in 700+ pages the book doesn't even mention alternatives such as ISO SPICE. An overpriced paperweight.

Rating:
Summary: Good material for beginners
Review: Everybody knows that people usually stumble into SQA. So, once you get started, you will want to have some reference material.

This book is easy to read & understand, and I'd recommend it to people eager to know a little more about Software Quality Assurance...

Rating:
Summary: Good material for beginners
Review: Everybody knows that people usually stumble into SQA. So, once you get started, you will want to have some reference material.

This book is easy to read & understand, and I'd recommend it to people eager to know a little more about Software Quality Assurance...

Rating:
Summary: To understand and comment the content
Review: Excellent book for beginners and practioner

Rating:
Summary: Valuable information, difficult read
Review: I'm working toward becoming certified as a software quality engineer (ASQ's CSQE). While researching learning materials, I found that this book is considered to be a solid overview of the CSQE body of knowledge.

Achieving CSQE requires a certain level of experience. You should be similarly experienced before you read this book. To understand it, you need to have solid experience as a software quality practitioner and exposure to effective software quality processes. This book unabashedly favors defect prevention through effective process, process measurement, and continuous process improvement - all widely considered Good Things - with a thick Capability Maturity Model accent.

The book's perspective comes from its authors' experience producing large, complex software for very large corporations, frequently on government or military contracts. They've worked on these kinds of projects for 20 years or more. Because of government requirements and the nature of these projects, they've watched the need for process turn into process implementation, expansion, and continuous improvement. As a result, they write as though the audience contains people facing similar situations, seldom creating a bridge to quality practitioners in less stringent environments. I'm a 13-year veteran of small software companies, most of which had comparatively featherweight software development processes. Even with my exposure to effective software processes and CMM, I found it difficult to relate to the authors' perspective.

Making this book even more challenging to understand is the authors' cumbersome, awkward text. I strongly encourage the authors to consider investing in a rigorous developmental edit to get rid of stilted structure and acres of passive voice, and to help them express their thoughts in a more expository manner. You'll find yourself reading sentences and even whole paragraphs twice as you try to decode the meaning. I read the whole chapter on Pareto analysis twice, but still didn't understand much of it because the text was so hard to penetrate.

Despite these difficulties, I've benefited from this book. It has helped me build my knowledge and has shown me possibilities I'd never considered. I'm sure it will be an important reference book while I take my CSQE exam. And then I'll be glad to put it on my shelf and let it sit there, because I'm never in the mood for a good text-wrestling match.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable information, difficult read
Review: I'm working toward becoming certified as a software quality engineer (ASQ's CSQE). While researching learning materials, I found that this book is considered to be a solid overview of the CSQE body of knowledge.

Achieving CSQE requires a certain level of experience. You should be similarly experienced before you read this book. To understand it, you need to have solid experience as a software quality practitioner and exposure to effective software quality processes. This book unabashedly favors defect prevention through effective process, process measurement, and continuous process improvement - all widely considered Good Things - with a thick Capability Maturity Model accent.

The book's perspective comes from its authors' experience producing large, complex software for very large corporations, frequently on government or military contracts. They've worked on these kinds of projects for 20 years or more. Because of government requirements and the nature of these projects, they've watched the need for process turn into process implementation, expansion, and continuous improvement. As a result, they write as though the audience contains people facing similar situations, seldom creating a bridge to quality practitioners in less stringent environments. I'm a 13-year veteran of small software companies, most of which had comparatively featherweight software development processes. Even with my exposure to effective software processes and CMM, I found it difficult to relate to the authors' perspective.

Making this book even more challenging to understand is the authors' cumbersome, awkward text. I strongly encourage the authors to consider investing in a rigorous developmental edit to get rid of stilted structure and acres of passive voice, and to help them express their thoughts in a more expository manner. You'll find yourself reading sentences and even whole paragraphs twice as you try to decode the meaning. I read the whole chapter on Pareto analysis twice, but still didn't understand much of it because the text was so hard to penetrate.

Despite these difficulties, I've benefited from this book. It has helped me build my knowledge and has shown me possibilities I'd never considered. I'm sure it will be an important reference book while I take my CSQE exam. And then I'll be glad to put it on my shelf and let it sit there, because I'm never in the mood for a good text-wrestling match.

Rating:
Summary: A true classic and the best SQA book for serious SQA pros
Review: This book is one of the most comprehensive treatments of SQA on the market. It is a collection of essays that cover every imaginable aspect of SQA with an overall focus to prepare candidates for the American Society of Quality's software quality engineer certification (CSQE). Each author is an acknowledged expert in the field, and each essay is well developed and gets to the essence of the topic.

Although the primary intent of this book is to prepare readers for the CSQE exam, this book contains the building blocks to develop a world-class software engineering process group and/or to move up the capability maturity model (CMM)ladder or achieve a higher level of capability within the context of SPICE (Software Process Improvement Capability dEtermination). In particular CMM and SPICE are 'assessed' levels of capability maturity with no prescribed techniques. This book provides a collection of techniques that will fit nicely into goals for increasing the maturity level of an organization regardless of the framework (CMM or SPICE) that is selected. What I like about this book is that it also addresses in detail how SQA aligns to ISO 9000-3, and the coverage of ISO/IEC 12207 and IEEE-STD-1074 (both of which are important international standards that should be considered as a part of an organization's strategy with respect to CMM or SPICE).

Chapters that provide excellent material supporting CMM and SPICE initiatives are: 1 & 2, SQA-Coming to Terms and How Does SQA Fit In? (a complete picture of the many components and considerations of an effective SQA function); 5, Software Quality Program Organization (great advice on organizing SQA within your company and aligning it to development and project management); 9, Inspections as an Up-Front Quality Technique (how to integrate inspections into a comprehensive, proactive quality posture); 10, Software Configuration Management (essential to any quality initiative regardless of whether the end goal is CMM, SPICE, ISO 9000 or compliance with international standards); 15, SQA Metrics (the foundation of SPICE and higher CMM levels); 19 & 20, Statistical Methods and Software Reliability Management (another set of foundation areas that are essential to SPICE and higher CMM levels).

Other chapters provide material that is specific to preparing for the CSQE examination or implementing any quality program that is focused on software quality assurance. I particularly liked the chapter on personnel requirements, which covered the people and process elements of SQA, and the cost of software quality. The latter gives you ample information for justifying SQA from a business perspective. This material is further augmented by a chapter on effective methods of IS quality assurance, which bridges the applications delivery (development) and service delivery (support and operations) domains.

SQA is not easy to organize and implement. Moreover, it is a highly technical discipline that is more engineering focused than most disciplines in development and operations. As such this book is definitely not for the faint-of-heart. It is intended for CSQE candidates and organizations that have attained some level of maturity and are striving to move higher up the capabilities ladder. If you are looking for a more basic book on SQA I recommend Customer Oriented Software Quality Assurance by Frank P. Ginac. However, if you are an experienced SQA practitioner, heading a software engineering process group, devising a plan for improving capability maturity for CMM or SPICE, or are preparing for the CSQE examination the Handbook of Software Quality Assurance is the best book you can have. It is a classic and earns a solid 5 stars.