Software Quality Assurance Online and Onsite

Course #	EN05071
Date(s)	February 21 - April 1, 2005 Six Sessions, One Session per Week
Times	Course may be taken online or on-site with classes on Tuesdays from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Instructor(s)	various industry experts  Linda Shafer
Course Fee(s)	Register on or before January 21, 2005 $1,800.00 Register after January 21, 2005 $1,850.00 DIR Register Fee $1,602.00
CEUs	4.8
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Program Description

Software Quality Assurance is a six-week course comprised of six sessions. It is a component of the Software Quality Institute's Software Project Management (SWPM) Certificate Program . SWPM itself contains six courses: this course, Software Quality Assurance, plus five others. All six courses are required for certification, but any course may be taken as a stand-alone course. The courses may be taken in any order.

SWPM offers a thorough view of the most up-to-date software best-practices, taught by expert practitioners from industry. With a focus specifically on software, the Software Quality Assurance course results in a working knowledge that incorporates quality, applicability, profitability and timeliness.

Course Description

Software projects proceed according to appropriate lifecycles, composed of phases and activities within each phase, be the lifecycle traditional or agile. There are many project activities, however, which cannot be confined to one phase or product component, but span the entire life of the project. This Software Quality Assurance course addresses some of these integral tasks. Risks must be identified early, but a well-managed project will keep the finger on the pulse by revisiting ever-changing risks at frequent intervals. The same is true of estimating the effort, cost, and schedule for a project: as time passes, estimates are replaced with actuals, and more project knowledge is gained, requiring continual re-estimation. To deliver products that are not only on-time and within-budget, but also meet quality goals, requires quality characteristics to be understood and built in from the beginning.

Sessions included in the Software Quality Assurance course are:

• Process Management -- Tailoring software processes
• Foundations and Tools of Software Quality Processes -- Key standards and guidelines for software quality engineering
• Introduction to Risk Management The importance of identifying, mitigating and controlling software project risks
• Managing Projects with Software Tools -- Planning for tools use on a software development project
• Configuration Management -- Processes for use throughout the product development life
• Quality Assurance and Cost of Quality How to employ SQA and reap the savings

About the Course

Students should be prepared to devote eight to ten hours of time to each session. Participation in the course is team-based and includes completing team and individual exercises as well as weekly conference calls. Students will have the opportunity to work with fellow team members on real-world projects.

Use of an online courseware tool allows students to virtually perform all work within a single application. Participants of the course will receive textbooks, the cost of which is included in the registration fee.

The Program Mentor: You've Got a Friend!

A program mentor, who is an experienced software project manager, guides the individual students and team members through the learning process, in addition to collecting program deliverables and giving feedback to the teams.

Course Benefits

The student who completes these six sessions will be able to:

• Given a completed project schedule, identify and prepare a Risk Management Plan to control expected risks.
• Describe and explain several popular risk management models.
• Construct a decision tree from a description of a risk situation, and calculate the probabilities of various outcomes.
• Describe the Risk Exposure formula, and explain what it represents.
• Construct a Top Ten Risk List, Risk Categorization Table, Risk Response Table, and Weekly Risk Change Report.
• Describe the classes and types of tools for each CMM maturity level.
• Select specific tools based on a repeatable process.
• Apply configuration management tools that support these five areas contributing to software product quality:
• Design and Code inspections
• Formal design methods
• Testing methods
• Prototyping and modern languages
• Evaluate commercial off-the-shelf configuration management and change control tools for use within software development projects.
• Define a process
• Demonstrate the ability to select a life cycle model based on project characteristics
• Demonstrate the ability to customize a life cycle for a specific project.
• Identify the organizations that form the foundation of quality for software engineering and project management
• Define and discuss the cost of quality as it pertains to software quality engineering
• Explain the fundamentals of cycle time reduction for software development
• Describe the key elements of the CMMI
• Use several statistical quality tools for process design, analysis, and measurement
• Describe how much quality costs, and the benefits of building it in

SQI is an approved Project Management Institute (PMI) Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.). Students who are PMP's will earn 42 PDU's for successful completion of this course. Additionally, this course satisfies PMI's 35-hour project management education requirement for students who choose to take the PMI certification examination. Please visit the PMI web site to learn more.

This course qualifies for 4.8 continuing education credits.

Register today to reserve your seat!

Sign up today for the February 21 - April 1, 2005 offering. The registration fee is $1,800 per person if registered on or before January 21, 2005 and $1,850 per person if registered on or after February 21, 2005.