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From: shimeall@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil (timothy shimeall)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: SE Terms Confusion
Summary: Get the dictionary
Keywords: Terminolgy IEEE Standards
Message-ID: <2081@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil>
Date: 11 Apr 91 21:13:52 GMT
References: <1991Apr11.144028.20787@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Reply-To: shimeall@cs.nps.navy.mil (timothy shimeall)
Organization: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey CA
Lines: 26

In article <1991Apr11.144028.20787@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> sgf0z@watt.acc.Virginia.EDU (Steven Glenn Fox) writes:
>I have been fighting with some SE terms recently and
>am looking for some help in defining them and how
>they relate to each other.  The terms I am referring to are:
>
>Software Quality (& Software Quality Assurance)
>Software Risk
>Software Testing
>Verification and Validation
>Software Reliability

May I suggest that a good starting place for defining these terms is
NOT coming up with new defintions, but rather examining existing
defintions.  A good place to start is the ANSI/IEEE Standard
Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology (Std. 729-1983 or a
revision), published by IEEE Computer Society Press.  One dictionary
can save a LOT of confusion.

All of the terms you list above are included, except software risk.
For that, may I suggest Barry Boehm's tutorial?  (By the way, the
standard technical definition of risk is something like "the probability 
of a given cost over a given period of time", you may wish to adapt
that for software...)
				Tim
-- 
Tim Shimeall ((408) 646-2509)