  It is well known fact that was phrased by famous quality scholar P.B. Crosby
that it is always cheaper to do the job right the first time. However, this
statement must be reconsidered with respect to software development projects,
because the concept of quality and associated costs measurements in software
engineering discipline is not as matured as in manufacturing and other fields
of the industry. Post delivery defects (i.e. software bugs) are very common and
integral part of software industry. While the process of measuring and
classifying quality cost components is visible, obvious and institutionalized
in manufacturing industry, it is still evolving in software industry. In
addition to this, the recommendations of British standard BS-6143-2:1990 for
classifying quality-related costs into prevention costs, appraisal costs, and
failure costs have been successfully adopted by many industries, by identifying
the activities carried out within each of these categories, and measuring the
costs connected with them, software industry has a long-way to go to have the
same level of adoption and institutionalization of cost of quality measurements
and visibility. Cost of Quality for software isn't the price of creating a
quality software product or IT-service. It's actually the cost of NOT creating
a quality software product or IT-service. The chronic affliction of majority of
software development projects that are frequently found bleeding with cost
overruns, schedule slippage, scope creep and poor quality of deliverables in
the global IT industry, was the trigger for this research work. Lessons learnt
from this study offer valuable prescriptive guidance for small and medium
software businesses, who can benefit from this study by applying the same for
their quality improvement initiatives using CoQ-metric, to enhance the
capability and maturity of their SDLC-project performance.
