Attitudes to formal Quality Management Systems: An Empirical Study in Norwegian Software Industry

Abstract

Quality Management in software development is a topic that has become very important. A lot of resources and effort has been invested in making formal routines and process descriptions, which have resulted in extensive systems, so-called Quality Management Systems(QMS). This thesis investigates attitudes towards such systems, seen from both software developers and quality managers points of view. During the fall of 2005, a student project in the subject Depth Study in Software Engineering TDT4735, in form of a qualitative empirical study was performed. Through interviews with developers and quality managers in different Norwegian software companies, it identified some interesting issues to further investigate. As an extension of that depth project, this Masters' Thesis goes further into the area of Quality Management Systems, by presenting a quantitative study. The main research questions for this thesis are: RQ1 Certification today, a must or just more work? RQ2 Developers vs Managers. A battle for quality? RQ3 How make a QMS work? In addition to the main empirical study, the thesis also consists of a brief field study towards two of the largest ICT organisations in Norway, and describes what they consider to be the most interesting and challenging aspects of quality assurance and process improvement in Norwegian software industry.