Software Quality Approaches

C. Amting Directorate General Information Society, European Commission, Brussels th Under the 4 Framework of European Research, the European Systems and Soft­ ware Initiative (ESSI) was part ofthe ESPRIT Programme. This initiative funded more than 470 projects in the area ofsoftware and system process improvements. The majority of these projects were process improvement experiments carrying out and taking up new development processes, methods and technology within the software development process ofa company. In addition, nodes (centres ofexper­ tise), European networks (organisations managing local activities), training and dissemination actions complemented the process improvementexperiments. ESSI aimed at improving the software development capabilities of European enterprises. It focused on best practice and helped European companies to develop world class skills and associated technologies to build the increasingly complex and varied systems needed to compete in the marketplace. The dissemination activities were designed to build a forum, at European level, to exchange information and knowledge gained within process improvement ex­ periments. Their major objective was to spread the message and the results of experiments to awider audience, through a variety ofdifferent channels. The European Experience Exchange ~UR~X) project has been one ofthese dis­ semination activities within the European Systems and Software Initiative.~UR~)( has collected the results of practitioner reports from numerous workshops in Europe and presents, in this series of books, the results of Best Practice achieve­ ments in European Companies over the last few years.

This book is a result of the European Experience Exchange (EUREX) project sponsored by the European Systems and Software Initiative for Software Best Practice in Europe. The EUREX project analyzed the industrial and economic impact and the common aspects and differences between and among more than 300 Software Process Improvement Experiments sponsored by the EU.
The current volume offers a variety of perspectives on software quality issues resulting from that analysis, including testing, verification and validation. This area represents one of the "great unknowns" in software development in the sense that many organisations, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have no purposeful process addressing these issues. As a result, this book is particularly meaningful for software practitioners in such enterprises, including both developers and line managers.