Application Of Six Sigma In Software Quality

The software industry is experiencing great changes nowadays which the traditional management style can not satisfy the demands for developing complicated software systems. There are common problems exist in software industy such as high developing cost, bad schedule controlling and poor quality assurance, etc. The reasons for that are not only related to the intrinsic complexity in software products, but also involve the absence of quality consciousness among people and incorrect ways of software development and maintenance. The ignorance of quality control during the software development life cycle is the most important reason.However, the existing software process management models such as ISO standard and CMM/CMMI only propose a kind of ideal management framework and the strandard the software companies should be reached. There is no more expatiation on how to carry out practical measures. Six sigma management including both six sigma improvement and design for six sigma is a theory that is customer-oriented and drived by facts and data. Six sigma focuses on process continuous improvement by applying many kinds of quality tools and methods. There are many successful cases in both manufacturing and service industries implementing six sigma. Herein, the paper combines six sigma including its theories and tools with software processes in order to produce high quality products through implementing continuous improvement in software development life cycle.The paper is spreaded from two ascepts. On one hand, design for six sigma is used in software requirement engineering process. Since the requirement engineering plays a decisive role in software development, a model based on the IDOV process is built for it which is in order to prevent defects from the very beginning of software life cycle. On the other hand, the DMAIC process is applied to optimize the whole software engineering process. With measurement and analysis of software process, severe defects are detected and eliminated in time. Six sigma provides a series of concrete steps to carry out continuous improvement during software process in which leads to high quality in the final software product. The appliance of six sigma in the software indusry has deep significance in both theory and practice.