Glass is well-known to experienced people in the software industry; the publisher should have included his biography on the cover of the book for novices. This book consists of a preface by the author, a lengthy introduction, and six more specific chapters.

The preface gives no guidance in how to read the book and does not mention the intended audience. The introduction gives overall ideas about software and quality. The author presents a list of quality attributes, and a table shows negative correlations among those attributes.

Chapter 2, “Technology of Quality,” makes up 60 percent of the book. The material is similar to that in any book on software development, testing, and validation. It covers the life cycle, requirements, design, implementation, checkout, and maintenance in the usual manner. Glass deals with quality, product, and service attributes and mentions quality advances made through fourth-generation languages and computer-aided software engineering.

Chapter 3 gives ways to tackle quality management, showing that no silver bullet exists. Chapter 4 sketches a series of examples in a journalistic style. Chapter 5 lists software quality issues, including outsourcing. Chapter 6 is a summary and includes lists of books published between 1974 and 1989.

Chapter 7, “Recommendations,” deals with project management. It gives four tables to be used for projects that the author refers to as “normal,” “programming in the large,” “critical,” and “small/prototype/throwaway.”

The extensive bibliography is selected from classic American books and papers. Nearly 290 references are disseminated throughout the book; within chapters, lists of one to ten references appear. This arrangement is pleasant because the reference is close to the text, but it is still difficult to make a sensible choice from the group of ten references.

The author’s perspective does not include trends in either international standardization bodies (such as IEC and ISO) or in US standardization groups such as IEEE or ANSI.

As usual for a book from Prentice-Hall, the cover is nice, the printing is clear and pleasant, the index is handy, and the typography is excellent.

I consider the book’s approach to software quality old-fashioned. Today the development and management of software includes such topics as object-oriented applications, distributed software, performance testing, and telecommunications standards.