ANSYS Quality Processes

ANSYS Inc.'s quality assurance process is integral to our corporate commitment to world-class products and customer services. Our formal verification process, administered by our Corporate Quality group, sets the standard for the finite element analysis software industry. This process includes:

Verifying and validating both existing and new program functions
Researching improvements to quality of the ANSYS program
Helping to define and improve our software development processes
Conducting internal quality audits.

Product errors cost you and us time, money, and frustration. That's why we create and follow a set of stringent plans to build quality into each product release. Detailed ANSYS Inc. quality procedures govern every activity related to product development and support. Full documentation for each procedure resides on-line, available to all ANSYS employees. Quality planning includes a development plan, a quality plan, documentation and training plans, a configuration management plan, a Software Design Specification, a release and delivery plan, and a verification and validation (testing) plan.

The Software Design Specification, a document or collection of documents that prescribes the requirements, design, and other characteristics of each proposed software feature, includes:

A design specification that satisfies requirements and objectives for the product
A set of tests that constitute acceptance criteria for the design.

Each project in the Software Design Specification then undergoes one or more design reviews by developers and engineers from the technical support, development, testing, and documentation groups.

We conduct regression tests to ensure that new product features and enhancements don't break existing product functions. Acceptance testing on each supported hardware platform and operating system also is required. A defect tracking system logs all errors that are discovered. A technically competent person must approve each step of the correction process before we consider a defect to be "fixed."

The new product then undergoes a final round of verification testing. All reported defects must be resolved before the product ships. Similarly, all documentation for the product goes through several levels of review by technical experts and must be approved before product release. Finally, Corporate Quality auditors ensure that each department or function involved in the product release has complied with ANSYS quality procedures.