Software Quality Assurance Audit Implementation in Industry: A Survey of Five Multinational Companies in Malaysia

Abstract

Software quality assurance (SQA) is an umbrella activity that is applied to each step of the software development process. Among others, it includes audit activities, an objective examination of a work product or set of work products against specific criteria. Although the importance of software quality audit is undisputable, both theoretically and practically, its acceptance and application in the industry vary. In companies that do implement audit, the extent to which the audit process performed is comprehensive and up to the theoretically defined standard differs. To obtain an insight of the current software quality audit implementation in the industry, a study was performed involving five multinational companies in Malaysia using case study method. Different types of audits are then compared between each of the multinational companies. It was found that the most common audits being implemented across all multinational companies and are available in most of the phases in their SQA lifecycle are the configuration audit and the phase transition audit. In summary, configuration audit and phase transition audit could be the least kind of audit to be performed by software organizations that demand the best practice in the industry.