Measuring the Cost of Software Quality of a Large Software Project at Bombardier Transportation
- Publication:
- Software Quality Professional
- Date:
- June 2012
- Issue:
- Volume 14 Issue 3
- Pages:
- pp. 14-31
- Author(s):
- Laporte, Claude Y., Berrhouma, Nabil, Doucet, Mikel, Palza-Vargas, Edgardo
- Organization(s):
- École de technologies supérieure, Québec, Canada, Bombardier Transportation, Québec, Canada
Abstract
Software quality cost, the total cost associated with prevention, appraisal, and correction of anomalies, is one measure of software process performance. The software development group at Bombardier Transportation in Québec, Canada undertook a measure of the cost of software quality in a software system for controlling an American city's subway system. A set of 27 classification rules was developed, and each project task was assigned a weighted classification. Over a thousand software tasks were analyzed. The measurements found that 33 percent of the overall cost of the subway control software project went into software quality. The cost of correcting anomalies was 10 percent, the cost of prevention was 2 percent, and the cost of evaluation was 21 percent of total development cost.