Mr. Ginac also touches on SEI's CMM, ISO 9000, and other topics of interest to the would-be quality professional. The thing that I hope that this book will do is to whet the reader's apetite for more on the topics discussed. As my title suggests, this book only touches the surface of a vast and inviting ocean of knowledge in this field. As such, I recommend it for the beinning to intermediate quality professional and for anyone in the IT field who wants to know what QA is.
What I like about this book is the basic industry information that an SQA Engineer should know. It is full of information in metrics. As a tester, I know that metrics were important but I did not know where to apply it effectively. It is also provided me some basic information in ISO 9000 and SEI CMM appraisals in customer-focused quality assurance.
I know there are many software organizations out there that have have not read this book. I highly recommend this book or similar basic book for those organizations that want to develop a quality product based on customer orientation.
What I liked most about the book is the consistent focus on metrics that are meaningful to business users. While I was aware of many of the quality attributes discussed, I learned a few new ones to which I can apply to measuring the quality of applications that are delivered to end users. If you are unfamiliar with the term "quality attribute" it is a term that also means "desirable characteristic", and can be expressed as a technical characteristic (function or feature) or a service-oriented characteristic (quantified reliability, mean time between failures, etc.).
Another thing that make this book valuable to me is part that focused on developing questionnaires and eliciting from end users what they deemed to be quality attributes. This goes a long way towards aligning the IT/IS service delivery function to actual business requirements (instead of what we perceive to be business requirements - too often there is a wide chasm separating the two views). Moreover, extending the author's approach by communicating these quality attributes backwards into the application delivery organization that is responsible for developing applications, the ability of IT/IS to align to business requirements is further strengthened. Bear in mind that the flow down of quality attributes does not have to go to an internal development organization. Applications delivery also encompasses software vendors and consultants doing on- or off-site programming, as well as service bureaus and ASPs (application service providers). In the case of external sources of applications, the quality attributes are invaluable--no, essential--to the RFP, negotiating and contract stages of procuring and supporting the application. The value is that quality attributes are an objective way of expressing requirements that can be measured.
This book is must-reading for anyone who provides application support, including tier-2 support, business analysts and production services management. Although it is less than 210 pages in length, it contains a wealth of information that will lead to ideas and strategies for delivering better service and for more closely aligning IT/IS to the business. The only thing I did not like about the book is the "Software Quality Assurance" part of the title. Had I not been fortunate enough to have a friend who practically insisted that I read this book I would have never considered this gem. It rates five big stars by living up to the "customer-oriented" part of the title and for opening my eyes to some important concepts.