Datasheet

What Is the Big Deal About Testing? ■ 11
Quality Goals and Test Phases
To build meaningful and concise tests, we need to define
requirements that describe the system behavior we anticipate.
But that alone would not be enough to specify the intensity or
the coverage needed for the tests to meet the end users’ quality
goals.
Quality goals are non-functional requirements. Typically in IT
projects, we use these quality goals:
 Adaptability — How easily software can be modified to
meet new requirements.
 Maintainability — How easily a component can be
modified to correct faults, improve performance or
other attributes, or adapt to a changed environment.
 Modularity — How much of a system or computer pro-
gram is composed of discrete components and a change
to one component has minimal impact on other compo-
nents.
 Generality — The breadth of applicability of the com-
ponent.
 Portability — How easily a system or component can be
transferred from one hardware or software environment
to another.
 Reliability — The ability of a component to perform its
required functions under stated conditions for a speci-
fied period of time.
 Correctness — How free a component is from faults in
its specification, design, and implementation. It is also
The HP Quality Model is a pragmatic approach
to software testing that aligns IT with business
outcomes.
MQM.book Page 11 Wednesday, May 7, 2008 11:29 AM