Concepts:
Evaluating Quality
Throughout the product lifecycle, to manage quality, measurements and
assessments of the process and product quality are performed. The evaluation of
quality may occur when a major event occurs, such as at the end of a phase, or
may occur when an artifact is produced, such as a code walkthrough. Described
below are the different evaluations that occur during the lifecycle.
Each phase and iteration in the Rational Unified Process (RUP) results in the
release (internal or external) of an executable product or subset of the final
product under development, at which time assessments are made for the following
purposes:
- Demonstrate achievement of the requirements (and criteria)
- Synchronize expectations
- Synchronize related artifacts into a baseline
- Identify risks
Major milestones occur at the end of each of the four RUP phases and verify that the objectives of the phase have been achieved.
There are four major Milestones:
Minor milestones occur at the conclusion of each iteration and focus on
verifying that the objectives of the iteration have been achieved. Status
assessments are periodic efforts to assess ongoing progress throughout an
iteration and/or phase.
See also:
Inspections, Reviews, and Walkthroughs are specific techniques focused on
evaluating artifacts and are a powerful method of improving the quality and
productivity of the development process. Conducting these should be done in a
meeting format, with one role acting as a facilitator, and a second role recording notes (change requests, issues, questions,
and so on).
The IEEE standard Glossary (1990 Ed.) defines these three kinds of efforts
as:
A formal meeting at which an artifact, or set of artifacts are presented to
the user, customer, or other interested party for comments and approval.
A formal evaluation technique in which artifacts are examined in detail by
a person or group other than the author to detect errors, violations of
development standards, and other problems.
A review process in which a developer leads one or more members of the
development team through a segment of an artifact that he or she has written
while the other members ask questions and make comments about technique,
style, possible errors, violation of development standards, and other
problems.
See Work Guidelines: Reviews for
additional information on conducting inspections, reviews, and walkthroughs.
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© 1987 - 2001 Rational Software Corporation
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