Software Quality Plans : A How to Guide for Project Staff

Every software project carries within it the seeds of its own failure. Missed deadlines, defects that surface in production, scope that creeps until it consumes the budget — these are not accidents. They are the predictable consequence of what happens when quality is treated as an afterthought rather than a discipline.

Software Quality Plans: A How-To Guide for Project Staff is the book that changes that equation. Written by David Tuffley and grounded in IEEE Standard 730 — the gold standard for software quality assurance — this concise, authoritative guide gives project managers, quality engineers, and development teams a practical, immediately usable framework for building quality into a project from its very first day.

What separates this book from the dense, impenetrable standards documents that gather dust on IT department shelves? Clarity. Tuffley has translated the architecture of IEEE 730 into plain-language guidance that project staff can actually use — section by section, deliverable by deliverable, decision by decision. Every chapter of a quality plan is explained not merely in terms of what it must contain, but why it matters and how to make it work in a real project environment.

The book walks readers through the complete anatomy of a software quality plan: how to define measurable quality objectives that hold a project accountable; how to organise responsibilities so that nothing falls through the cracks; how to document standards in ways that survive team changes; how to structure reviews and audits that catch problems early rather than late; and how to manage suppliers, contractors, and purchased software products without losing control of quality.

Risk management receives its own treatment — a structured, repeatable approach to identifying, assessing, and containing the cost and schedule risks that kill projects. So too does configuration management, testing, problem reporting, corrective action, and the often-neglected but critical practice of the project debrief, where hard-won lessons are captured before the team disperses and memory fades.

What you hold in your hands is not a theoretical treatise. It is a working tool. Each section mirrors the structure of an actual quality plan document, complete with example tables, checklists, and worked illustrations that allow a project team to move directly from reading to doing.

Whether you are a project manager facing your first formal quality audit, a quality engineer trying to standardise practice across a portfolio of projects, or a developer who wants to understand what the quality function is actually trying to achieve — this book meets you where you are and takes you where you need to go.

Quality, Aristotle observed, is not an act. It is a habit. This book is how that habit is built.

David Tuffley PhD is lecturer and researcher at Griffith University in Australia. David is a Software Engineer, though his interests range across Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, Literature, History, Design and Architecture. David has been an academic since 1999. For 15 years before academia David was a consultant for public and private sector IT clients in Australia and the United Kingdom. He combines theory and practice in a focussed and disciplined way that has proved effective for solving problems for clients.