How Effective software development methodology can protect software manufacturers from legal liability
Week 9 Homework Assignment
1. Identify and briefly discuss two ways that the use of an effective software development
methodology can protect software manufacturers from legal liability for defective software.
2. Why is the system-human interface one of the most important but difficult areas of safety-critical
systems? Do a search on the Internet and find three good sources of information relating to how to
design an effective system-human interface.
3. Your organization develops accounting software for use by individuals to budget and forecast their
expenses and pay their bills while keeping track of the amount of money in their savings and
checking accounts. Develop a strong argument for the management of your firm as to why the firm
must conduct an assessment of its current software development practices.
4. Discuss why an organization might elect to use a separate, independent team for quality testing
rather than the group of people who originally developed the software
Note: You must have a minimum of 200 words for every question, and references used.
Solution
Question #1
Software product liability has not been in existence for the vast corporations, in which
software have utilized quite some time until recently. The designing of software-controlled
commodities has also been simple. The leading vendors of most of these software-related goods
have marketed their products under tight agreements. Due to all these factors, there have been
few lawyers capable of handling cases concerning such situations, implying that the
manufacturer will not be liable since no one has adequate knowledge about the system to face the
developer in a court of law in order to file a case regarding the software quality assurance. If the
defective machine was tested and the user accepted and acknowledged by signing that the system
operates to the best of their knowledge, it will not be easy to place a claim against the
manufacturer.
The producers of the defective products may protect themselves by investing in
improved product quality such that, by the time someone is harmed or injured by the utilization
of the software depended on the product; they cannot be doubted to be responsible for the
damage. In such cases, the manufacturer of the software has to bear the product culpability due
to the injury caused by the defectiveness of their software. The regulation on strict accountability
may take the course if the plaintiff is in a position to justify that the software product is defective
and that the imperfection led to the cause of the injury or harm; otherwise, the producer will not
be held liable.
Question #2
The human interface system is of importance since it offers controls by which the system
users can carry out operations of the machine or system and these include all the elements related
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to touch, seeing or performance of any control function in order to receive feedback. A well-
developed interface system is considered more important due its significant interactive capacity.
The interface is the primary point of contact between the user and the system hence it should be
well designed to meet the needs of the user optimally (Pap, 2003).
Safety consideration is part of the consideration of the interface since the human error can
substantially contribute to accidents emanating from poor utilization of the interface. In safety
demanding systems, the main aim is to prevent the user or driver of the system from making
mistakes, which result into the hazard. However, there are several concessions between the
features that make the interface usable and the ones, which determine its safety (Kim, & Park,
2012). Therefore, it very crucial for one to embrace the fact that, not all systems are safety
critical and thus, usability is the main point of concern in the human interactive interface. If one
must utilize the system to perform a particular task, the guide should be able to guide by reacting
and providing feedback
Question #3
The more important the software is, the more it requires motivating practitioners to adopt
the best practice in order to improve and maintain the quality of the processes in use and as a
result achieves targets and results. To help in improving the software, it is very vital to determine
the status of utilization of practices and other relevant techniques. The effectiveness of the
assessment-based software process for all the organizations needs o evaluated in order to identify
areas which need to pay more attention for better working of the system(Greenberg, & Buxton,
2008, April). The primary objective of this process is to determine whether the current regime
needs to be improved, replaced or both in order to minimize the risk associated with a software
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system and operations. Another reason as to why the corporation should assess the current
system status is to know the primary reference to focus on, in the course of software and process
improvement. Besides, assessment of the current software system will provide an opportunity to
gather data concerning the weak areas and assigning and hence, the utilization not. Therefore, it
can be said that it is of importance for any company to assess the prevailing status of the current
system before recommending for the development of a different system, as this will help
substantially ion strategizing on how to manage better the system for better results.
Question #4
Software testing is an activity that is distributed throughout the life cycle of the particular
software. It is quite logical for a firm to adopt different groups to conduct the assessment and
testing. A group of individuals performing the software testing should be separated from the
development group to ensure that the requirement of the software system is met. This group tests
various aspects including functionality, reliability, and level of performance among many others.
The alternative testing team will provide its results and then the enterprise is in a position
to make a comparison of the two reports and hence make a more informed decision towards the
utilization reliability of the system based on the two reports. The use of an independent testing
group has benefits, in that; it results in an exchange of ideas between the various colleagues. For
instance, the group inspection provides an excellent chance to have a look at how people perform
their duties (Wiegers, 2016). Thus, knowledge is automatically and with no struggle exchanged
about the programming features, commenting styles, the methodology employed applied in
documentation processes and all the other relevant aspects of the software development,
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therefore, benefiting both parties with new ideologies concerning the system software, how to
better manage and use it safely.
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 6
References
Garrepalli, T. (2015). Knowledge Management in Software Testing. http://www.diva-
portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:869051
Greenberg, S., & Buxton, B. (2008, April). Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the
time). In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (pp. 111-120). ACM. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1357074
Greenberg, S., & Buxton, B. (2008, April). Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the
time). In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (pp. 111-120). ACM. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1357074
Kim, M. H., & Park, M. G. (2012). A Study on the Software Fault Modes and Effect Analysis for
Software Safety Evaluation. Journal of Korea Multimedia Society, 15(1), 115-130.
http://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/ArticleFullRecord.jsp?cn=MTMDCW_2012_v15n
1_115
Pap, Z. (2003). Methods of checking and using safety criteria. Periodica Polytechnica Electrical
Engineering, 46(1-2), 75-98. http://www.pp.bme.hu/ee/article/download/964/572
Wiegers, K. (2016). Improving Quality Through Software Inspections. Processimpact.com.
Retrieved 17 April 2016, from http://www.processimpact.com/articles/inspects.html
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