Software Quality Improvement Activities at Nippon Steel Corporation

Abstract

Our basic ideas to improve software quality are: (1) assuring quality of final products by assuring processes. That is, we control the software development process in order to reduce rework at the later processes, including maintenance and (2) assuring quality of the software under operation by practicing preventive maintenance.As the main elements in software development are, project managers, analysts, designers, programmers and testers, our approach is based on small groups or Quality Circle activities, which develop motivation to improve quality through mutual education, individual group activities and exchange of experiences. We have applied this approach both to the software system development process and to the maintenance process.In this paper, we present the current result of activités by one of our works. The error ratio per line of code in system development phase has been reduced and is almost constant regardless of current project size. And the number of software failures in operation has been reduced to one fifth in five years. These activities based on smal1-groups, are the most practical way to improve software quality, as long as human beings are the main elements of software development and maintenance processes. Therefore, this is our first step to zero-defect software.