ISTS4102 - Software Quality

This course offers a comprehensive, engineering-focused study of the frameworks, metrics, processes, and governance structures required to guarantee and manage quality throughout the modern software development lifecycle. Designed in complete alignment with an Outcome-Based Education (OBE) model, this course shifts the focus from reactive, downstream testing to proactive, upstream quality orchestration, process improvement, and architectural sustainability.

Students explore international software quality standards (such as ISO/IEC 25010 and CMMI maturity layers) and learn how to design, execute, and adapt an IEEE 730-compliant Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Plan. The course emphasizes quantitative measurement, guiding students to apply structural and object-oriented metrics suites (such as Chidamber & Kemerer) alongside Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) frameworks to evaluate code health objectively. In the laboratory, students build automated static application analysis configurations, establish strict automated quality gates within Continuous Integration (CI/CD) workflows, evaluate test suite fault-detection strength using mutation testing, and assess systems for performance bottlenecks and accessibility compliance. Additionally, the course prepares students for professional governance roles by simulating industry-standard formal reviews, independent verification and validation (IV&V) methods, and cross-team quality auditing.