The Key to Institutionalizing Quality

SQA is an essential component of any software process improvement program and it is often one of the most difficult ones to implement effectively.  Significant effort is often spent on SQA activities with low returns, and organizations continue to miss many critical problems with the software products and processes.  Often team members lack formal training in SQA principals, methods and techniques in areas such as peer reviews/inspections and quality metrics. 

Executed properly, SQA should be a part of the process throughout the entire SDLC and not just during test time.  Organizations often find that with all the testing done, they are still not catching the most critical problems. An effective SQA program ensures that test plans are adequate and that testing resources are allocated to find important and risky problems.  An SQA program is intended to objectively verify that software products and activities adhere to the applicable standards, procedures and requirements, and ensure that approved software development procedures are followed & not abandoned in the panic of a project behind schedule.

Why SMS?
SMS can help you implement a suitable structure for SQA that stresses both process assurance and product assurance.  SMS' SQA services are based on the simple premise that SQA’s role is to assure quality, and to support the project’s effort to produce defect-free software work products (not just code).   SMS' SQA offering is integrated with an overall process improvement program that aims at optimizing your ROI. SMS employs highly respected industry standards including SEI CMMI, ASQ, and IEEE. With SMS, you are not just getting an SQA program, but an offering that is an integral part of your software process improvement activities.

SQA Consulting
SMS can help you create a climate in which SQA is looked upon as a valuable component of the development effort, and not just a police group. We will help you to establish an environment in which the slogan “quality is everybody’s business” becomes a reality, ensuring that the SQA organization matures in parallel with the software development organization, so that the SQA gradually evolves from a focus on compliance to a focus on improvement.

SMS offers a complete array of SQA services starting with a review and assessment of strengths and areas for improvement in your current SQA program.  SMS can also help develop an SQA charter and organization, define SQA processes, procedures, and checklists, and develop an SQA training and orientation program. Finally, if your organization is short on fulltime SQA practitioners, we can recruit and help you staff your organization with fulltime consultants from SMS’s wide network of professionals.

SQA Training
Any proper implantation of new process requires good training. You can bring your employees up to speed on best-in-class practices with customized, on-site corporate team training. SMS offers over 30 courses related to software process improvement, including classes on CMMI-based SQA, SQA for Practitioners, inspections, code reviews, and defect casual analysis.  Team training by SMS reinforces your team’s willingness and ability to follow the new procedures.  Our modular format allows you to tailor a training program that addresses your most pressing software development challenges and helps bring your team up to higher levels of software development maturity.