Strategic Software Quality Management

This book introduces strategic management tools and techniques appropriate for use in software quality management. There has been a gap between strategic management and software quality, and the solutions for solving the problems and improving the software quality usually come from the experience of the IT experts: the managerial experience. This book helps people interested in software quality to go beyond the IT technical issues and integrate strategic management tools with their technical knowledge to become more prepared for the future, develop long-term plans for solutions and improvements, take more strategic decisions even when compared with the competitors, and finally, reach sustainable continuous improvements. This book, by bridging software quality management and strategic management, can be used by software quality practitioners for effective results. The software development process is usually studied with regards to its functional aspects and the attempts to improve the quality and performance are mainly concentrated on the technical side. The developers, testers, or engineers search for solutions mostly directed toward a local problem specific to a unit, department, or code. What is often missing is grasping the big image of the problem: the managerial aspect. Even if all the technical staff are doing their tasks as they were planned, there is a vital need for identifying the bottlenecks and the points in need of improvements, alterations, and exclusions, together with tracking the progress and coming up with future strategies. This makes the software quality management activities intertwined with the strategic management concepts where strategic management enhances the quality management with its tools and techniques, and, in return, the software quality management provides the strategic management with insights on the technical issues, resulting in symbiosis. The highly competitive nature of the IT world makes it inevitable to take strategic tools and techniques into account and infuse them into the technical practices of software quality management. This book encompasses the following chapters: analyzing the current situation, identifying the improvement areas, determination of the strategies, tracking the progress, and achieving a sustainable improvement.