Software is nothing more than programming code that is designed to perform a certain task. If you use a computer, then you're using software. It may be the online hotel reservation system you use when planning trips or the navigation system in your car or even the bells and whistles in your cell phone. These are all driven by software and software sometimes has bugs that need to be fixed. An ideal situation would be to avoid them in the beginning, and that is exactly what Six Sigma methodology helps software developers to do.
If we consider any software program, such as a hotel reservation system, there would be utilities in it such as calculations for multiple guests during different seasons and so on. If for example, there is an incorrect calculation of the room rate, or there is a missing database link that causes updates made to another part of the database not to be reflected in the data, it may lead to miscalculation of rates for some guests.
Generally speaking, there are two types of software bugs - programming bugs and data bugs. Programming bugs are more difficult to discover because they are usually of the logical error type. The program will need to be modified and the code recompiled before it can be used again. Data bugs are more easy discovered and isolated, as they mainly occur because of errors in tables.
The nature of Six Sigma is its control mechanism at every stage of product development. Various controls can be employed for mistake proofing. For instance, if there were normal minimums for rates or costs or charges, then any value below that minimum would be an error. Six Sigma systematically helps to eliminate bugs in this way.
There are specific areas where information can be studied and analyzed during the software development process. Because Six Sigma is by its nature, data driven, it is useful in this regard. During the data collection period, the programmer can be assured that the data is as correct as it possibly can be. Later during development, any areas that crop up as potentially troubling can be mistake proofed using the earlier collected date. Using Six Sigma as a debugging tool in this way is helpful in minimizing losses brought on by unforeseen software bugs. - 15465
If we consider any software program, such as a hotel reservation system, there would be utilities in it such as calculations for multiple guests during different seasons and so on. If for example, there is an incorrect calculation of the room rate, or there is a missing database link that causes updates made to another part of the database not to be reflected in the data, it may lead to miscalculation of rates for some guests.
Generally speaking, there are two types of software bugs - programming bugs and data bugs. Programming bugs are more difficult to discover because they are usually of the logical error type. The program will need to be modified and the code recompiled before it can be used again. Data bugs are more easy discovered and isolated, as they mainly occur because of errors in tables.
The nature of Six Sigma is its control mechanism at every stage of product development. Various controls can be employed for mistake proofing. For instance, if there were normal minimums for rates or costs or charges, then any value below that minimum would be an error. Six Sigma systematically helps to eliminate bugs in this way.
There are specific areas where information can be studied and analyzed during the software development process. Because Six Sigma is by its nature, data driven, it is useful in this regard. During the data collection period, the programmer can be assured that the data is as correct as it possibly can be. Later during development, any areas that crop up as potentially troubling can be mistake proofed using the earlier collected date. Using Six Sigma as a debugging tool in this way is helpful in minimizing losses brought on by unforeseen software bugs. - 15465
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