Quality Week is an excellent conference which is held in the Spring of every year in San Francisco. The QW'96 event was organized by SRI's (Software Research Institute) Executive Director Ms. Rita Bral, and cosponsored by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and IEEE Computer Society. Quality Week '96 was the first event of its kind to receive sponsorship status from both the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM.

Quality Week Conference focuses on advances in software test technology, quality control, risk management, software safety, and test automation. Software analysis methodologies, supported by advanced automated software test methods, promise major advances in system quality and reliability, assuming continued competitiveness. The mission of the QW '96 was to increase awareness of the importance of Software Quality and methods of achieving it. It promotes software quality by providing technological education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Over 825 persons attended the four-day QW'96 event with around 10% from the greater San Francisco Bay area, 40% originating from the elsewhere in the Western USA, 40% from the Eastern USA and 10% from outside the USA. QW'96's vendor area had 29 exhibiting companies.

QW'96 attendees came from over 20 countries, from as far as Hong Kong and Finland. Delegates from over 375 different companies, ranging in size from small consulting agencies to giant international corporations, attended the event. QW'96 speakers' backgrounds were about equally divided among industrial researchers, academics, and real-world practitioners. The technical strength of QW'96 is the work of the international Advisory Board, composed of 75% from the USA and 25% from outside the USA. They reviewed a total of 185 proposed presentations. Track Chairs included Dr. Boris Beizer, Dr. Bob Birss, Mr. Bill Bently and Mr. Rob Schultz.

The keynote presentations were extremely interesting. John Marciniak brought the audience up to date on the recent activities of the National Software Council. Tom Gilb talked about his concept of "How to Get to Level 6" referring to the five levels of the popular SEI Capability Maturity Model for software. Lee Osterweil of the University of Massachusetts offered many challenges to the audience, and finally, Watts Humphrey of the SEI talked about his "Personal Maturity Model" and the success that he has had in its use.

From the many sessions and tutorials, it is clear that this conference is playing a key role in the software industry.