Quality Assurance

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a conception of quality as an evolutionary process toward perfection instead of conceiving quality as controlling the number of defective products produced.

For total quality management to become a reality with systems projects the full organizational support of management and early commitment to quality from the analyst and from the business are necessary.

One of the strongest quality assurance actions the systems analysis team can take is routine structured walkthroughs. The structured walkthrough uses peer reviewers to monitor the system's programming and overall development, point out problems, and allow the programmer or analyst responsible for that portion to make suitable changes.

Bottom-up design refers to identifying the processes that need computerization as they arise, analyzing them as systems, and either coding them or purchasing packaged software to meet the immediate problem.

Top-down design allows the systems analyst to ascertain overall organizational objectives and how they are best met in an overall system and then to divide that overall system into subsystems. The modular programming concept is useful for a top-down approach. Once the top-down approach is taken the whole system is broken down into logical, manageable-sized modules, or subprograms, to use modular programming techniques.