Some companies today are reporting increases in software productivity and quality as high as 1,000% using quality approaches pioneered in other indus-tries. The goals of this special section are to offer guidance to those interested in learning about these quality improvement approaches in software development, and to examine the payoff of software quality improvement efforts based on recent experiences. Although the concept of quality is fairly simple,(see sidebar “Elements of the Quality Paradigm”), the complex of methods, tools, attitudes, and values involved in providing high-quality products and services is not. Many software professionals have found it difficult to understand and accept approaches like Total