Software quality, by its very nature, is elusive. Add to that the issue of ever-changing user requirements and the vagaries of software project management and "quality" can easily become a mere word on a distant horizon. This highly acclaimed book demonstrates how the Unified Modeling Language (UML) can be used within a process framework to help reduce complexity, clarify requirements, and add structure to project management in order to yield software quality here and now.

Process Quality Assurance for UML-Based Projects focuses on the crucial process aspect of software quality. In an easy, entertaining way, the author outlines common-sense strategies for determining the applicability of UML to a project, creating and managing project teams, identifying levels of quality standards, applying quality techniques, and estimating and testing in UML-based projects.

With this book you will be able to:

• Understand the elusive nature of software quality, the pressures on software quality, and the importance of processes and modeling in enhancing software quality
• Divide modeling into three distinct but related spaces--problem, solution, and background space--and correlate the roles of business analyst, system designer, and system architect to these modeling spaces respectively
• Understand quality discussions applicable to small, medium, and large projects
• Appreciate the sociological aspect of quality management in software projects, including the value of transactional analysis (TA) in team formation and motivation
• Relate to an iterative and incremental process based on the concepts of process-components and related activities, tasks, roles, and deliverables
• Move your organization forward in terms of CMM process maturity
• Gain valuable and practical insights into process and project metrics, measurements, and estimations
• Appreciate the strategic aspect of testing as it relates to quality assurance
• Understand quality discussions applicable to new developments, integration, package implementation, outsourcing, data warehousing, and educational projects
• Access extremely well-referenced work by leading practitioners, researchers, and academicians
• Estimate and refine process and project metrics

At the end of each chapter, key points are encapsulated in FAQs and exercises for easy referencing and team training. The accompanying CD-ROM contains chapter diagrams in a course format, a Case Study, customizable templates , a starting project plan based on process-components, and trial versions of relevant process tools, MeNtOR Lite(TM), and CBEADS(TM).

Bhuvan Unhelkar, Ph.D., is the principal of MethodScience.com and is a globally respected consultant, trainer, author, and popular orator. Winner of the Computerworld Object Developer's Award for "Best Use of the OO Approach across the Organization," he is the author of four books and numerous papers, publications, and presentations.