Quality software can be defined as software which has reasonably no bugs or defects, is delivered on time, available within budget, meets requirement or expectations and is properly maintainable.

ISO 8402-1986 standard defines quality of software as “the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”

To have the best quality software, there are a few key aspects of quality for the customer which needs to be fulfilled. These are

  • Good design, i.e. attractive look and style
  • Good functionality, i.e. performs all the required tasks without any problems
  • Reliability, i.e. acceptable level of breakdown or failure
  • Consistency
  • Durable, i.e. lasts as long as it should
  • Good after sales service
  • Value for money

Good Design

For any software product, it is very important to have an attractive design. Obviously, the application or product should meet the specifications requirement and should also be very user friendly. But, the initial attracting point for a major number of customers is the product’s good look and style. Therefore, it is extremely important to have a right colour combination, font size and a very attractive text style and buttons in order to attract more number of customers.

Good Functionality

Apart from just good looks and design, it is also very important to make sure that the functionality of the product or application is intact. All the mentioned features and their functionality should work as expected and should provide positive and accurate results. Also, to ensure good functionality of the product, it is important to avoid any deviation from the actual to expected results.

Reliable

Reliability of the software is also a very important aspect of the quality software. For instance, consider an application which saves students records. Here, the application should save all the students records and should not fail after saving 100 records. This is called as the reliability of the software.

Consistency

The software should maintain its consistency across the application or product. Single software can be multi-dimensional. Therefore, it is very important to make sure that all the different dimensions of the software should behave in a consistent manner.

Durable

Durability of the software is also a very important aspect of quality software. The software developed should be very durable. For instance, if the software is being used since a year and the number of the data entered has exceeded the number of 5000, then the software should not fail if the number of data entered is further increased. Therefore, even though the software has been working for a long time, it should continue to behave in the same way as it is supposed to without any functional breaks.

Good After Sale Services

Once the software product is delivered to the customers or end users, the maintenance of the software comes into play. Now, it is very important to provide a good support system or sales service to keep the customers happy and satisfied by clearing their queries and supporting them when needed.

For instance, if a user has been using a software application for almost six months and then realizes that he needs to make some changes to the application, then those changes should be done as soon as possible and should be delivered back to the customer on time without fail. Also, the quality of the software should be preserved even after making the requested changes.

Value for Money

Quality software is always delivered to the customer with the right value for money. The product should meet all the requirement specifications and should also work as expected, should be user friendly and should have an attractive design. Moreover, good after sale services should be provided to the customers and some additional functionality can be added along with the mentioned features to keep the customers extra happy.

However, it is important to understand that these additional functionalities should preserve the software quality and should also keep the product user friendly. All this ultimately adds to the value for money.