Software Quality and Software Testing in Internet Times

Software quality and software testing have for decades been decisive topics in software development. However their potential and their influence on the economical side of software development and operations has been understood more clearly only in the last years. This is illustrated by the increasing number of books such as this one and conferences such as SQM(Software Quality Management Congress) and ICSTEST (In­ ternational Conference on Software Testing). The era of the commercial Internet has brought about new requirements and new challenges for software quality and testing experts. They must cope with new technolo­ gies,but more importantly with new project structures where for example the market­ ing department takes on the role of software buyer, general IT service companies are awarded development outsourcing contracts and IT generalists provide IT infrastruc­ ture and the application framework, and untrained customers become users of the software systems. Also, tougher economical conditions and narrow time frames make software development more challenging today. This, the third volume in Springer's series "software.quality@xpert.press", is a col­ lection of articles which focuses on these challenges. The authors are well-known ex­ perts of national and international reputation. They have described their current practices and experience taken from a variety of IT projects in large organisations.

This publication deals with two major software quality management challenges. The first one is how to deliver a software product within a competitive time frame and with a adequate quality to the customer. The second one concerns how to best deal with the growing complexity of software applications using today's technology including client-server, internet, and legacy systems. Due to faster development cycles the quality of an application has to be monitored during operation, since the usage of the application and the technology around it might change from day-to-day. This book compiles experiences from different industries and perspectives. Its goal is to give practical insights into high-tech software development projects of today.