The central activity in the quality development process related to defects and assuring quality for the software products is the implementation of particular quality assurance activities. Accordingly, these activities have to and typically require a lot of human efforts as well as using computing and related resources.
The allocation of efforts between quality assurance activities is not permanent over time because of the characteristics of the process and displacement of the center of activity over time.
Quality planning has to come before the other two types of quality activities. That’s why, at the beginning of product engineering, quality planning must be a major part of quality development activities.
Afterward, accidental corrections to the quality purposes and selected quality tactics might be applied, but they require not so much effort.
The collaborative effort of chosen quality assurance activities typically shows the following scheme:
- There is a gradual building process for individual quality assurance activities and for them in common
- The total effort usually escalates just before product release, when development is replaced by testing activities
- During the implementation of the product and immediately after it the effort reduces and suddenly falls down with the product output
Although the special combination of chosen quality assurance activities together with the specific engineering process would have an influence on the form of this effort profile, it is planned to follow the general scheme.