Concepts: Quality Dimensions
Quality, as discussed in the Best Practices: Verify Quality, is not a simple concept to describe. Likewise, when our focus turns to the discussion of testing to identify quality, there is no single perspective of what quality is or how its measured. In Rational Unified Process, we address this issue by stating that Quality has the following dimensions:
- Reliability: software robustness and reliability (resistance to failures, such as crashes, memory leaks, etc.), resource usage, and code integrity and structure (technical compliance to language and syntax).
- Function: ability to execute the specified use cases as intended and required.
- Performance: the timing profiles and operational characteristics of the target-of-test. The timing profiles include the codeÆs execution flow, data access, function calls, and system calls. Operational characteristics for performance include those characteristics related to production load, such as response time, operational reliability (MTTF), and operational limits such as load capacity or stress.
For each of these dimensions, one or more individual types of tests (see Concepts:
Types of Test) should be implemented and executed during one or more of the
different stages of test (see Concepts: Stages of Test)
