Sunday, February 28, 2010

The ISO 9126 Software Quality Standards


Function
Sub Category
DEFINITION
Functionality
Suitability
Attributes of software that bear on the presence and appropriateness of a set of functions for specified tasks
Accurateness
Attributes of software that bear on the provision of right or agreed upon results or effects
Interoperability
Attributes of software that bear on its ability to interact with other systems
Compliance
Attributes of software that make the software adhere to application-related standards or conventions or regulations in laws and similar prescriptions
Security
Attributes of software that bear on its ability to prevent unauthorized access, whether accidental or deliberate, to programs or data
Reliability
Maturity
Attributes of software that bear on the frequency of failure by faults in the software
Fault tolerance
Attributes of software that bear on its ability to maintain a specified level of performance in case of software faults or of infringement of its specified interface
Recoverability
Attributes of software that bear on the capability to re-establish its level of performance and recover the data directly affected in case of a failure and on the time and effort needed for it
Usability
Understandability
Attributes of software that bear on the users’ effort for recognizing the logical concept and its applicability
Learnability
Attributes of software that bear on the users’ effort for learning its application
Operability
Attributes of software that bear on the users’ effort for operation and operation control
Efficiency
Time behavior
Attributes of software that bear on response and processing times and on throughput rates in performing its function
Resource behavior
Attributes of software that bear on the amount of resources used and the duration of such use in performing its function
Maintainability
Analyzability
Attributes of software that bear on the effort needed for diagnosis of deficiencies or causes of failures or for identification of parts to be modified
Changeability
Attributes of software that bear on the effort needed for modification, fault removal, or environmental change
Stability
Attributes of software that bear on the risk of unexpected effect of modifications
Testability
Attributes of software that bear on the effort needed for validating the modified software
Portability
Adaptability
Attributes of software that bear on the opportunity for its adaptation to different specified environments without applying other actions or means than those provided for this purpose for the software considered
Installability
Attributes of software that bear on the effort needed to install the software in a specified environment
Conformance
Attributes of software that make the software adhere to standards or conventions relating to portability
Replaceability
Attributes of software that bear on opportunity and effort using it in the place of specified other software in the environment of that software

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Cloud Computing

Visited Cloudcamp today at IIT Delhi, it was a nice experience, came to know about few new terms and business models. Here I try to share some of it.
You can find Definition of cloud computing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing, at broad level, there are three type of cloud computing
Software as a service : SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or upload the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires. The on-demand function may be handled internally to share licenses within a firm or by a third-party application service provider (ASP) sharing licenses between firms. In Indian context Airtel has stack of such products. There was presentation from salesforce.com on their offering. I use to know salesforce as CRM application provider only, but today I came know that they have development platform (onforce.com) to offer too.
Platform as a service' (PaaS) the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service. It often goes further with the provision of a software development platform, that is designed for Cloud Computing at the top of the cloud stack. There was presentation from Microsoft on this, Microsoft presentation was around their product Azure. The product looks promising.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the delivery of computer infrastructure (typically a platform virtualization environment) as a service. There was presentation by amazon on their products, the presenter spoke about Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) in detail.
If this interests you, google it… you will find tons of information and business ideas around this. 

Friday, February 12, 2010

Law of triviality

Parkinson's Law of triviality is the idea that organization gives disproportionate time to insignificant items. An example often used is the discussion of a multi million pound power plant. No one really understands the implications so it gets waved through the committee with little discussion. However, when it comes to the issue of whether to provide a bike shed for workers, there could be an animated discussion about - whether to build it, how to build, and what color e.t.c.
In our media the law of triviality is quite evident; see in today’s news “My Name Is Khan “related stories are dominating, where the Chidambaram’s comments on PoK residents are not even visible on front pages.
At personal level when I analyzed my time spending pattern, I find law of triviality is prevailing. I think its bit hard to change the thought process of nation or organization, but we should be able to change our own.
I have taken few baby step towards managing law of triviality, now I list down top three important tasks for the day, this I do during my morning tea, some time I suggest my colleagues also to make such list, I ask them when I want their focus on an important issue effecting my project. For my project meetings, I set the agenda in advance and also sequence it as per the criticality of the issues.
I close with few quotes:
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. - William Penn
Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.
Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.-  M. Scott Peck
If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.  - Lee Iacocca
 It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau