A Lifecycle Approach to Quality Management

Success in ever more competitive worldwide marketplaces demands continually smarter products and systems, which in turn lead to compounding complexity. Furthermore, while advanced functionality is an important competitive differentiator, quality has become part of the "price of entry" into the marketplace. Quality can no longer be considered an attribute that can be added into systems at the end of the development lifecycle. Controlling risks and costs needs to be a guiding principle that drives virtually all stages of the lifecycle, starting at the concept stage; building during analysis, design, deployment and acceptance; and continuing through service until end-of-life retirement. As a result, the management of quality must consider all key systems engineering disciplines, including requirements engineering, systems design and testing, and change and configuration management. This white paper examines the changing role of quality assurance and looks at approaches to effectively extend application lifecycle management (ALM) to include quality management and how this improves project outcomes.