What are software design & data defects?

Let us firstly see what is a defect?

The problems, resulting in the software applications automatically initiating uneconomical or otherwise incorrect actions, can be broadly categorized as software design defects and data defects.

Software Design Defects:

Software design defects that most commonly cause bad decisions by automated decision making applications include:

1) Designing software with incomplete or erroneous decision-making criteria. Actions have been incorrect because the decision-making logic omitted factors that should have been included. In other cases, decision-making criteria included in the software were appropriate, either at the time of design or later, because of changed circumstances.

2) Failing to program the software as intended by the customer (user), or designer, resulting in logic errors often referred to as programming errors.

3) Omitting needed edit checks for determining completeness of output data. Critical data elements have been left blank on many input documents, and because no checks were included, the applications processed the transactions with incomplete data.

Data Defects:

Input data is frequently a problem. Since much of this data is an integral part of the decision making process, its poor quality can adversely affect the computer-directed actions.

Common problems are:

1) Incomplete data used by automated decision-making applications. Some input documents prepared by people omitted entries in data elements that were critical to the application but were processed anyway. The documents were not rejected when incomplete data was being used. In other instances, data needed by the application that should have become part of IT files was not put into the system.

2) Incorrect data used in automated decision-making application processing. People have often unintentionally introduced incorrect data into the IT system.

3) Obsolete data used in automated decision-making application processing. Data in the IT files became obsolete due to new circumstances. The new data may have been available but was not put into the computer.

Tags: Software Testing, Software Quality, Software design defects, software data defects, quality Assurance, software defects