A case study in SQA audits

Software quality assurance (SQA) audits are becoming a standard practice in corporations seeking to enter contractual relations with other organizations, or just evaluating their own state of readiness. This paper describes one approach to conducting SQA audits. Excerpts from reports of actual audits conducted on several organizations engaged in software development are used to show how an audit is conducted and what can be achieved through the auditing process. The paper is not meant to be a definitive answer or guide to doing SQA audits. Rather, it serves as an annotated case study of how SQA audits can be conducted with an emphasis on data gathering and reporting.Dr Paul W. Oman is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Idaho, and an independent software consultant who specializes in software analysis. He is the director of the Software Engineering Test Lab within the UI College of Engineering, where he conducts research in software development methods, CASE tools, and software maintainability issues. Oman has published over 50 articles and reports on software tools, software development, and computer science education. He has a PhD in computer science and is a member of the IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, and ACM.