A STRATEGY FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE OF COMPUTER BASED DESIGN METHODS

Abstract: In software development processes, reviews are typically conducted to remove faults be-fore requirements or designs are passed to the subsequent phase. However, in spite of the strin-gent review procedures, the process is still porous and significant numbers of faults conceals. This paper presents a novel strategy for reducing faults by assuring quality of the in-process implemen-tations, dubbed abstract prototyping. It extends the current practices by defining the steps of the design phase of the processes of development of engineering design software tools. Under this procedure, reviews are performed to remove faults before theories, methods, algorithms, or pilot prototypes are passed to the subsequent stage rather than exclusively reviewing the requirements or designs. Prototypes provide the feel and the look of these in-process implementations and spe-cially designed metrics help the developers estimate the extent to which they fulfill their respective requirements. Case studies show that the levels of fulfillment of requirements can adequately be estimated and faults detected early on. 1. INRODUCTION Quality is defined as the degree of excellence of something [1]. This implies that any software project can be found lacking if measured against an unclear notion of what quality is [2]. Various testing strategies can be used to determine whether software satisfy its specification, and it is recognized, for example, in [3] that each technique provides varying amount of assurance. It is universally understood that quality of software products, including those used in engineering design [variously known as Compute