The Quality Special Interest Group of the British Computer Society presents the edited proceedings of their sixth International Conference on Software Quality Management (SQM'98) held in April 1998 in Amsterdam. The objective of this series of annual conferences is to promote international co-operation among those concerned with software quality and process improvement, by creating a greater understanding of software quality issues and by sharing current research and industrial experience. The papers cover a broad spectrum of practical experience and research. The topic areas include process improvement, maintaining a quality management system, quality metrics, human factors, project management issues, software tools and approaches to systems development. The organisers would like to thank Origin for their sponsorship of the proceedings. The editors are indebted to the members of the International Advisory Committee for their support and for refereeing the abstracts and the final papers, as well as to the authors who have contributed to the success of this conference.