Effectiveness The state of having produced a decided or desired effect; the state of achieving customer satisfaction

Efficiency A measure of performance that compares output with cost or resource utilization

Embedded software (IEEE) Software that is part of a larger system and performs some of the requirements of that system; e,g., software used in an aircraft or rapid transit system. Such software does not provide an interface with the user. See: firmware,

Employee involvement Regular participation of employees in decision-making and suggestions. The driving forces behind increasing the involvement of employees are the conviction that more brains are better, that people in the process know it best, and that involved employees will be more motivated to do what is best for the organization.

Empowerment Usually refers to giving employees decision-making and problem-solving authority within their jobs.

End user (ANSI) (1) A person, device, program, or computer system that uses an information system for the purpose of data processing in information exchange. (2) A person whose occupation requires the use of an information system but does not require any knowledge of computers or computer programming. See: user.

Entity relationship diagram (IEEE) A diagram that depicts a set of real-world entities and the logical relationships among them. See: data structure diagram.

Entity The representation of a set of real or abstract things (people, objects, places, events, ideas, combination of things, etc.) that are recognized as the same type because they share the same characteristics and can participate in the same relationships.

Environment all of the process conditions surrounding or affecting the manufacture and quality of a part or product.

Environment (ANSI) (1) Everything that supports a system or the performance of a function. (2) The conditions that affect the performance of a system or function.

Equivalence class partitioning (Myers) Partitioning the input domain of a program into a finite number of classes [sets], to identify a minimal set of well selected test cases to represent these classes. There are two types of input equivalence classes, valid and invalid.

Error (ISO) A discrepancy between a computed, observed, or measured value or condition and the true, specified, or theoretically correct value or condition. See: anomaly, bug, defect, exception, fault.

Error analysis See: debugging, failure analysis.

Error detection Techniques used to identify errors in data transfers. See: check summation, cyclic redundancy check [CRC], parity check, longitudinal redundancy.

Error guessing (NBS) Test data selection technique. The selection is to pick values that are likely to cause errors.

Error seeding (IEEE) The process of intentionally adding known faults to those already in a computer program for the purpose of monitoring the rate of detection and removal, and estimating the number of faults remaining in the program. Contrast with mutation analysis.

Event A happening, the arrival of a significant point in time, a change in status of something or the occurrence of something external that causes the business to react.

Event table A table which lists events and the corresponding specified effect[s] of or reaction[s] to each event.

Exception conditions/responses table A special type of event table.

Exception (IEEE) An event that causes suspension of normal program execution. Types include addressing exception, data exception, operation exception, overflow exception, protection exception, underflow exception.

Execution trace (IEEE) A record of the sequence of instructions executed during the execution of a computer program. Often takes the form of a list of code labels encountered as the program executes. Syn: code trace, control flow trace. See: retrospective trace, subroutine trace, symbolic trace, variable trace.

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW The course that teaches key executives their role in the Quality Process.

Expectations Customer perceptions about how a product or service will meet their needs and requirements; expectations for a product or service are shaped by many factors; including the specific use the customer intends to make of it, prior experience with a similar product or service and representations and commitments made by marketing and advertising.

EXPERIMENT A test under defined conditions to determine an unknown effect; to illustrate or verify a known law; to test or establish a hypothesis.

EXPERIMENTAL ERROR Variation in observations made under identical test conditions. Also called residual error. The amount of variation which cannot be attributed to the variables included in the experiment.

External customer A person or organization outside your organization who receives the output of a process. Of all external customers, the end-user should be the most important.

External test data (NBS) Test data that is at the extreme or boundary of the domain of an input variable or which produces results at the boundary of an output domain.