From pustaver@swquality.com Mon Jan 5 06:45:11 1998 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 17:26:04 -0500 (EST) From: John Pustaver Subject: MARK YOUR CALENDAR: Software Quality Group Meeting, Wed Jan 14, Establishing a Software Reliability Program Software Quality Group Meeting Meetings of the Software Quality Group are held on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at the facilities of Waterfield Technology Group, 430 Bedford Street, Lexington, Massachusetts (see below for directions). MEETING DAY & DATE: Wednesday, Jan. 14, 1998 TIME: 6:15 PM Topic: Establishing a Software Reliability Program SPEAKER: Alex Elentukh, Consultant MORE INFO: JOHN PUSTAVER, 978-443-4254, pustaver @swquality.com LOCATION: Waterfield Technology Group, 430 Bedford Street, Lexington DESCRIPTION: Software reliability has emerged as a separate subject of engineering. The pioneering book by John Musa released ten years ago is followed by the Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering edited by Michael Lyu and published by McGraw Hill last year. However, to support a company-wide software reliability program remains a well recognized challenge. Following are the suggested steps in establishing such a program. A) Start performing the prolong testing attempting to exercise the time-dependent aspect of system quality and matching the field-observed defect types. B) Influence system design in order to be able to trace each failure to its origin. C) Collect operational profiles in attempt to understand the exact system usage. D) Train staff in several related disciplines, e.g. statistical testing and modeling. E) Select a modeling tool. F) Enhance release criteria with a certain reliability prediction. G) Start turning parameters of the selected model and optimizing the whole program. During his 25 years career in software industry Alex held various positions in several major corporations. While serving as a QA Director at Intel, Alex led a team of test engineers. At Motorola Alex was part of the SQA group deploying the Six Sigma methodology. At Fidelity Systems Company Alex improved the organizational maturity using SEI CMM framework. Alex authored numerous papers on software quality and reliability. He also taught a QA class at Northeaster University. Currently, an independent consultant, Alex helps companies with their process improvement program. NEXT MEETING NOTE: The February meeting will be held on February 11, 1998, the second Wednesday, The Software Quality Group holds monthly meetings. Topics covered at these meetings have included software testing, inspections, ISO 9000, configuration management, and demonstrations of vendor QA tools. There is no charge. The Software Quality Group meets monthly at 6:15pm on the second Wednesday of the month at the facilities of Waterfield Technology Group, Lexington Office Park, 430 Bedford Street, Lexington, 2nd floor, next to the elevator. This is just off of route 95 (AKA 128) at the Rtes 4 & 225 exit in Lexington. Take the west bound exit. Bedford Street is on the left just before the Denny's restaurant but you can't make a left here so you have to go to the turn-around a little further up the road. Information about future meetings will be available on the Software Quality Page at http://www.swquality.com/users/pustaver. To be on the email distribution list, send a note to pustaver@swquality.com. The Software Quality Group is cosponsored by the ASQ Software Division and all are welcome. Directors of the Software Quality Group are John Pustaver, American Society for Quality, Software Division, Region I Councilor and Bill Nicholson, Waterfield Technology Group. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Software Quality Consulting voice:978-443-4254 fax:978-443-6052 pustaver@swquality.com http://www.swquality.com/users/pustaver