Journals Proceedings

Abstract

The software industry is a multibillion industry today .All organizations, individuals and businesses use software today for a variety of purposes that range from paying bills online to managing aerospace systems. However, software by itself is prone to errors and bugs leading to disastrous results at times. This has caused many software agencies to look for standardized software engineering processes which result in increased reliability, less debugging and improved quality control. Six Sigma has taken the manufacturing world by storm with its proven results in increasing quality and reducing defects. It is therefore natural that in the past few years, software corporations and firms are now looking to see how Six Sigma methods can be incorporated into the software engineering process. Many companies have tried and successfully implemented Six Sigma methods in the software development , design and testing processes in Software Engineering. However there is still a lot of skepticism with regard to the application of the Six Sigma process to software .There is also a lack of academic research in this area. This paper is an attempt to clear the misconceptions and demonstrate that Six Sigma can be successfully applied to the software engineering scenario with the help of real time cases. This study was conducted as part of a research project sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology(DST) ,Govt of India.