Inphina-Software-Audit-Service

Richa

Informations

• Publié par: Ensoo
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English

Extrait

Inphina Software Audit Offering

What is a Software Audit

A Software Audit is the evaluation and investigation of a software system, its

security and performance or the development process resulting in findings,

conclusions and recommendations. These are communicated with the customer

verbally, in written form or as a presentation.

On the basis of the findings and recommendations, the stakeholders get a

snapshot view of the health of the system. As an analogy, the Software Audit is

equivalent to a health check on an individual where post analysis the individual

gets a set of reports and recommendations hence enabling him to lead a better

life.

Why do you need a Software Audit

The chances of a software project failing are very high. Even though Agile

methodologies have helped on improving the success ratio, however, there is a

still a fair amount of chance that your project will fail if a Software Audit is not

performed and/or action is not taken after the Software Audit.

The

Standish Group's 2009 report

shows a marked decrease in the success of

software development

The Standish Group's just-released report, "CHAOS Summary 2009," "This year's

results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects

succeeding which are delivered on time, on budget, with required features and

functions" says Jim Johnson, chairman of The Standish Group, "44% were

challenged which are late, over budget, and/or with less than the required

features and functions and 24% failed which are cancelled prior to completion or

delivered and never used."

Apart from getting a high quality, robust product there are other benefits of doing

a Software Audit which include

•

Planning for improvements

•

Finding gaps in the development process and taking corrective action

•

Uncertainty reduction

•

Risk containment by finding the risks associated with this

code/technology/development process, understanding early warning signs

that will show the risk & what should we do now?

•

Tackling Risk

•

Lowering the TCO of the system

Software Audit on time saves money, because expensive rework later on during

© Inphina Software Audit Offering

[e-mail]

the project will be avoided. In the long run discovering issues that occur with

projects and finding solutions for these also helps to avoid making the same

mistakes over and over again. This increases the quality of the work done across

projects and saves a lot of money too."

How can Inphina help?

Inphina can help you increase the overall quality of your projects and save money

by providing four types of audit. Each of these is tailored to a specific phase of a

project. Together they cover the full project life cycle. Also, each of the audit types

can be customized to your requirements. During a project one or more types of

audit can be used to target specific areas of interest to you

The Specialist Generalist Approach

Inphina has a lot of experience implementing audits in large, complex

environments based on J2EE, XML and integration technology. We use a

specialist/generalist approach backed up by a QA consultant. The specialist

focuses on the technical details of an audit (technology, code, check lists, best

practices). The generalist focuses on the functional details (requirements,

functionality, architecture, structure) and has overall responsibility for the audit.

Generalist and specialist share the same technical background, making it possible

to work efficiently and in support of each other. The QA consultant is an

experienced auditor that can be consulted during the audit and executes peer

reviews on audit deliverables.

Types of Software Audits

© Inphina Software Audit Offering

[e-mail]

Expert

opinion

An expert opinion gives a clear and argued answer to

an

open question

like "Tell me the maintainability of

the software.

Advice

An advice gives recommendations about

How

to

achieve a certain goal.

Review

A review investigates an object

after

its completion. It

dives deep and lets the stakeholders know if the

software has been built according to the agreed upon

standards, quality procedures etc.

Inspection

An inspection is a health check which is done when the

object is

being built

. It is dynamic in nature and

suggests corrective actions on the basis of findings.

Categories of Software Audits

•

Software Quality -

This is a generalized check and is one of the most

requested Software Audit for Inphina. This involves validating the code

against the industry best practices, code and design guidelines,

architectural compliance, process compliance etc. This check would help in

validating the status of your code and map it against the expected ilities.

•

Development Process -

This check would help in identifying the gaps in

the development process with respect to best practices for software

development. If you are already on the path of Agile adoption, then this

scan would give you feedback on the state of Agile adoption and

recommendations on improvements.

•

Performance -

This is a specialized check. This would test the performance

of the system against the specified Quality of Service. Report and

Recommendations would identify the hotspots found and corrective actions

to improve the performance of the system.

•

Security -

This is a specialized check. This check would gauge the security

of the system and validate if it can survive common attacks, as per the

OWASP guidelines. The check would also validate whether the security

architecture has been designed according to known standards and can

serve as the basis for future releases of the application.

© Inphina Software Audit Offering

[e-mail]

The Inphina Approach

Every Software Audit carried out by Inphina is a combination of automated and

manual steps.

1.

Initial Scan -

This phase involves the initial study of the system and basic

understanding to carry out the Software Audit. The system is set up for

check and configurations are tweaked to execute it on the audit engine.

© Inphina Software Audit Offering

[e-mail]

2.

Team Interview -

Key people of the team, across hierarchies, who have

worked on the system are interviewed . This is a critical step in the Software

Audit process and the success of the check is largely dependent on the

inputs received in this step.

3.

Component Selection -

A pilot component or a set of pilot components

are selected for the review. These components have the relative complexity

to mirror the system as a whole.

4.

Analysis and Validation -

A lot of tests and tools are executed on the

selected components to gather a sizeable amount of raw data.

5.

Data to Information -

Raw data is converted to data which can be used

for analysis, reporting and feedback. This required experience of auditors to

decipher various reports and suggest concrete areas of improvements.

6.

Report & Recommendations -

Final reporting & recommendation is done

in form of generating an executive report which is in non-technical business

terms. This helps the stakeholders to take concrete actions on the basis of

recommendations. Technical assessments are attached as an appendix to

the report. These give detailed insights and guidelines to the development

team.

© Inphina Software Audit Offering

[e-mail]