Software Quality Assurance - The effectiveness of systems integrity Essay

Software Quality Assurance - The effectiveness of systems integrity assurance actions - Essay Example Mr. Spencer-Jones, the CEO admits that the firm has been under financial pressure due to reduced sales of their Maxil CC5 aircraft. This had been worsened by stiff competition from Vader Aircraft’s Vader XX8 and their yet to be launched Vader XX9 aircrafts. Nonetheless, Maxil has been a model aviation firm, until the recent tragic incident that involved one of their aircrafts, the recently launched Maxil FBW1. This report presents an analysis of the events leading to the accident; it not only indicates how the events contributed to the incident, but also makes recommendations on how improvements can be made in the development of safety critical systems at Maxil. Investigations reveal a lot of loopholes and inconsistencies that could have, in one way or another, caused the accident. Some of these include shortage of experts in engineering, design and programming, poor cooperation among project stakeholders, as well as threats and intimidation of staff. However, it is evident th at the most probable cause of the disaster was the software; data from the flight recorder indicated that the computer controlling the aircraft caused a severe height adjustment moments before the crash. Interviews with the various people involved in the design and development of the software used in the aircrafts indicate that there was a lack of professionalism, right from the programming to the testing phase. However, the most likely cause of the calamity was poor testing. Development and Testing of the Software Software testing starts during the coding of the application. The programmers identify and correct errors in the code as they continue with their work. In this case, despite the fact that Maxil has a team of capable programmers, their knowledge of the ADA and Assembler programming languages, which are utilized in the development of software in the aviation industry, was insufficient. They had to rely on Wayne Goldsmith, himself a design Engineer, to translate the code wri tten by the programmers into either ADA or Assembler. This provided an opportunity for many errors in the code to go unnoticed since only Wayne was sufficiently familiar with both ADA and Assembler. The other problem with testing came about right from management. The Metrics and Quality Manager, Sid Bentley is an expert in Mechanical Engineering, not Software Engineering. His knowledge in product and metrics testing was, therefore, not sufficient in software testing; he had just started learning about code analysis, GQM, CMM, and PROFES. He relied on the integrity and professionalism of the software engineers and a strict testing regime, hoping they would deliver quality software. However, this was not realized because of the unprofessional conduct of the programmers, coupled with the absence of a well structured testing rubric for the applications. These are evidenced by the fact that the team of programmers was not available to test the software when they were needed. In addition, much as they claimed to have the knowledge to test the software, it is not entirely professional for programmers to test their own software. The integrity of the software came into question after the testing session that was carried out by John Garside. The fact that Ralph Plunket delivered the code late, together with the threats