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The Quest for Software Quality By Kamesh Pemmaraju The goal of every commercial software development project is to ship a high quality product on time and within budget. According to a recent Standish group research study [1], only an average of 16.2% software projects complete on-time and on-budget. Companies developing commercial software (especially software that is not subject to strictly enforced standards and contractual requirements) will seriously consider spending precious resources and time on a quality assurance program only if they believe that the approach to quality will provide substantial return on investment without eroding expected profits. Companies also expect quality assurance to mitigate risks associated with deploying a software product of questionable quality while not impacting on the schedule and the budget of their projects. This article focuses on the dilemma of defining and assessing software quality and the rapid advances being made in the software industry to address these issues. The definitions of software quality Software quality means different things to different people. This makes the entire concept highly context-dependent. For example, in the context of automobiles, a Mercedes Benz or a Cadillac may be symbols of high quality, but how many of us can really afford to buy one of these fine vehicles? Given a somewhat less ambitious budget, a Toyota or a Chevy might serve most of our needs with adequate quality. Just as there is no one vehicle that satisfies everyone’s needs, so too there can be no one universally-accepted definition of quality. Even so, it is important to formalize your definition of software quality so that everyone understands your priorities and relates your sense of quality to their own. The IEEE, ISO, DoD and several other agencies and individuals have offered definitions for software quality. Some of these definitions “conformance to requirements”, “meeting users’ composite expectations”, “v