SOFTWARE QUALITY ASSURANCE COMPETENCE CENTRE Alena Buchalcevova Department of Information Technologies Faculty of Informatics and Statistics University of Economics, Prague buchalc@vse.cz Keywords Academic industry collaboration, Software Quality Assurance, Competence Centre, testing Abstract The main contribution of this paper lies in the demonstration of a real academic-industry collaboration in the field of Software Quality Assurance. This collaboration is illustrated on the example of the Software Quality Assurance Competence Centre, being a part of the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics, at the University of Economics in Prague since 2012. Two successful projects implemented by the SQA CC are presented to illustrate the core activities of the competence centre. The main areas that are specific to competence centre management are identified and further discussed in lessons learned. 1. Introduction As software expansion accelerates into the majority of medium and large enterprises and at the same time software acquisition costs decline thanks to an emergence of new technology and development methodologies, application development starts to focus on the issue of quality in software development as a way of gaining a competitive advantage. A number of authors as for example (Osterweil, 1996) or (Orso & Rothermel, 2014) confirm such a trend in application development. Moreoever, Jones & Bonsignour (2011) dealing with the issue of quality in their book the Economics of Software Quality identify potential cost savings in achieving high quality when developing a software product. It holds true that the larger the software project, the greater the savings. Indirectly, this fact presents a reason for pursuing high quality in projects and confirms that quality strengthens company’s competitiveness. Continuously, costs and investments into information technology have gradually been falling in the United States as well as in Europe since the outset of the financial and economic crisis. Companies strive to minimize their IT related costs to save company’s financial means, increase operational efficiency and profit. The merits that distinguish strong software companies from their competitors are quality, reliability and low maintenance costs of software. These merits are crucial for European and American companies seeking inexpensive but reliable partners for software development.