Solved by verified expert:Case Study 2: Why Six-Sigma Efforts Do Not Apply to SoftwareRead the case study titled, “Why Six-Sigma Efforts Do Not Apply to Software” located in Chapter 9 of the textbook and consider a situation where you are working for a large software development company that is considering applying the Six-Sigma quality constraints to the software it produces. Write a five to six (5-6) page paper in which you:Explain the Six-Sigma quality constraints and provide a justification as to why the software development company should consider it. Compare and contrast quality control processes for both hardware and software.Examine the arguments presented in the case study and evaluate their applications to control the quality of software produced in the organization. Propose a testing strategy for a software development project that ensures high quality of the software delivered.Describe the idiosyncrasies of software, and explain why software needs a different set of rules for testing and for quality control as opposed to those used in hardware.Use at least three (3) quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources. Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:Compare and contrast testing techniques and concepts to include functional, performance, acceptance, and installation.Use technology and information resources to research issues in software engineering.Write clearly and concisely about advanced software engineering topics using proper writing mechanics and technical style conventions.
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Why Six-Sigma Efforts do not Apply to Software When we think of high-quality systems, we
often use hardware analogies to justify applying successful hardware techniques to
software. But Binder (1997) explains why some of the hardware techniques are
inappropriate for software. In particular, consider the notion of building software to meet
what is known as “six-sigma” quality constraints. Manufactured parts usually have a range
or tolerance within which they are said to meet their design goals. For example, if a part is
to weigh 45 mg, we may in fact accept parts that weigh between 44.9998 mg and 45.0002
mg; if a part’s weight is outside this range, we say that it is faulty or defective. A six-sigma
quality constraint says that in a billion parts, we can expect only 3.4 to be outside the
acceptable range (i.e., no more than 3.4 parts per billion are faulty). As the number of parts
in a product increases, the chances of getting a fault-free product drop, so that the chance
of a fault-free 100-part product (where the parts are designed to six-sigma constraints) is
0.9997. We can address this drop in quality by reducing the number of parts, reducing the
number of critical constraints per part, and simplifying the process by which we put
together separate parts. However, Binder points out that this hardware analogy is
inappropriate for software for three reasons: process, characteristics, and uniqueness. First,
because people are variable, the software process inherently contains a large degree of
uncontrollable variation from one “part” to another. Second, software either conforms or it
doesn’t. There are no degrees of conformance, as in “doesn’t conform, conforms somewhat,
conforms a lot, conforms completely.” Conformance is binary and cannot even be
associated with a single fault; sometimes many faults contribute to a single failure, and we
usually do not know exactly how many faults a system contains. Moreover, the cause of a
failure may rest with a different, interfacing application (as when an external system sends
the wrong message to the system under test). Third, software is not the result of a massproduction process. “It is inconceivable that you would attempt to build thousands of
identical software components with an identical development process, sample just a few
for conformance, and then, post hoc, try to fix the process if it produces too many systems
that don’t meet requirements. We can produce millions of copies by a mechanical process,
but this is irrelevant with respect to software defects …. Used as a slogan, six-sigma simply
means some (subjectively) very low defect level. The precise statistical sense is lost”
(Binder 1997).
…
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