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Software Quality
Factors Affecting Product Quality in the
Software Development Industry of Sri Lanka
Sahan Jayawarna
A.T. Fonseka

Abstract
The software development industry of Sri Lanka has grown rapidly during recent years.
However, the quality of software products has become a critical issue as shown in the increase in software defects and associated solutions for those problems. This study aimed at understanding the critical factors underlying software product quality. It was based on a survey of ten software development companies and two software development units in non-software development companies. The sample consisted of 150 respondents.
The study showed that it is necessary to have (i) technological excellence (ii) software process maturity (iii) team productivity and (iv) stakeholder involvement in order to deliver high quality products. Failure to deliver high quality software products will result in higher software life cycle costs and loss of future sales revenue.
Key Words : Sri Lanka 's Software Development Industry, Software Product Quality

1. Introduction
The global IT industry has been expanding rapidly over the past two decades. The US financial and economic crisis of 2008 slowed down the progress of the industry but it now shows signs of recovery. Software solutions are used in almost all industries ranging from the retail trade to automotive, chemicals, energy, utilities, to aerospace. Hence, it is an industry with great potential.
The Sri Lankan software industry, even though small, has grown impressively during the past fifteen years. At present, there are over 175 software development companies
Sahan Jayawarna, B.Sc. (Computer), CIMA (UK), BCS (UK,) MBCS, and an MBA from PIM, is a software engineer at Dialog Telekom Ltd.
Prof. A. T. Fonseka, is a senior faculty member at the Postgraduate Institute of Management
(PIM), Colombo, Sri Lanka.

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Factors Affecting Product Quality in the
Software Development Industry of



References: A software quality crisis is brewing (2008). Retrieved 7th July 2009, From http:// searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/column/0,294698, sid92_gci1333425, Acuña, T., Gomez, M. & Juristo, N. (2008). Towards understanding the relationship between team climate and software quality-a quasi-experimental study, Empirical Closed source software (2009). Retrieved 27th July 2009, From http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Closed_source Diaz, M. and Sligo, J. (1997). How software process improvement helped Motorola, IEEE Software, Vol Glossary (2009). Retrieved 27th May 2009, From http://thiyagarajan.wordpress.com/ glossary/ Harter, D.E. and Slaughter, S.A. (2000). Process maturity and software quality: a field study, International Conference on Information Systems, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, pp. 407-411 ICT Profile - Sri Lanka (2006) projects/dig-rev/info/lk/ Kang, H. et al. (2006). Factors in team effectiveness: Cognitive and demographic similarities of software development team members, Retrieved 8th

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