Software quality engineering: strategy, activities and evolution

Software quality addresses a wide range of attributes: functional quality, user experience, security, accessibility, performance, etc. Software defects have business and social consequences. Therefore, software development projects need to define and implement a cross-cutting strategy in order to focus on activities (code analysis, testing, quality metrics, monitoring, etc.) aimed at assuring such quality attributes, depending on the risks of each application. This paper has the following goals: (1) to present the business and social value of software quality engineering; (2) to describe the main activities required to detect defects as early as possible and to provide feedback; (3) to present the continuous quality approach which should be embedded in agile software development, and (4) to reflect on the expectations and evolution of software quality.