rowing AWARENESS and importance of public domain models such as SEI SW CMM, BOOTSTRAP and SPICE. 
Changing nature of SOFTWARE development, especially model-based development (CASE) and component-based development (CBD). Growing need to connect software of different AGES and sources. Software projects not pure software development, but including maintenance, package selection and implementation, and other software activities. (Perhaps software projects never were pure development, but such topics as project management, quality management and configuration management used to be taught as if they were.) 
Faced with these changes, SQA needs to be both REDUCTIONIST (giving close attention to the quality of components from various sources) and holistic (giving broad attention to the emergent properties of the whole assembled system, in terms of its overall fit to business requirements). 
As I see it, the mandate of SQA is to make defects in software products and PROCESSES visible to management. SQA fits into a context of software quality management where this visibility leads to corrective and preventative action (not itself part of SQA), and to general software process improvement.

rowing awareness and importance of public domain models such as SEI SW CMM, BOOTSTRAP and SPICE. 
Changing nature of software development, especially model-based development (CASE) and component-based development (CBD). Growing need to connect software of different ages and sources. Software projects not pure software development, but including maintenance, package selection and implementation, and other software activities. (Perhaps software projects never were pure development, but such topics as project management, quality management and configuration management used to be taught as if they were.) 
Faced with these changes, SQA needs to be both reductionist (giving close attention to the quality of components from various sources) and holistic (giving broad attention to the emergent properties of the whole assembled system, in terms of its overall fit to business requirements). 
As I see it, the mandate of SQA is to make defects in software products and processes visible to management. SQA fits into a context of software quality management where this visibility leads to corrective and preventative action (not itself part of SQA), and to general software process improvement.