Software Quality

Chapter 11SQA Records and Documentation Control

11.1 Jeff's Troubles – an Introductory Mini-Case

Jeff, head of the legal department, was obviously furious when he entered the office of Roberto, the Software Development Department Manager. Ignoring preliminaries, he walked in and announced: “You cannot imagine the difficulties I'm having collecting evidence to support our case in the Margaret Gardens claim. Jerry managed the development project at the time, and mentioned a lot of documents that were supposed to support our case. But, some of the key documents were carelessly written, while others simply don't exist. Even though the project was completed only six months ago, so many important documents are already unavailable or simply poorly written:

• Minutes of joint meetings that were held with the customer to discuss our proposal prior to contract signing – during which some major changes were agreed to – were discarded, or shredded two months ago.
• A software change request form submitted by Margaret Gardens last August is available but, unbelievably, unsigned. The requested change was implemented during the development process just eleven months ago; however, the respective SCO (software change order) along with the test report for the completed change, are missing.
• According to Margaret Garden's change requests, the original requirement specification document was revised twice. I managed to locate these important documents, but while the original document was written according ...