Software Product Quality: Ensuring a Common Goal

Abstract

Software qualities are in many cases tacit and hard to measure. Thus, there is a potential risk that they get lower priority than deadlines, cost and functionality. Yet software qualities impact customers, profits and even developer efficiency. This paper presents a method to evaluate the priority of software qualities in an industrial context. The method is applied in an exploratory case study, where the ISO 9126 model for software quality is combined with Theory-W to create a process for evaluating the alignment between success-critical stakeholder groups in the area of software product quality. The results of the case study using this tool is then presented and discussed. It is shown that the method provides valuable information about software qualities.

Balancing software product investments

“…While it is known that people have trouble comparing the relative importance of these different investment types against one another [2], these are important decisions that managers must face. This only makes understanding the nature of these choices and decision support even more important.…”

“…Getting people to identify the balance between investment types and constraints is a difficult task, but an essential one if these investment options and constraints are going to be successfully managed [2].…”

“…Previous research by the authors has sought to find the balance between aspects of individual investment types -from a product perspective aspects of software product quality were studied using ISO 9126 [2] and from an organisational perspective aspects of IC were studied [3]. However, these aspects must ultimately be understood and balanced together.…”

“…But people in the software development industry have trouble comparing the importance of the aspects that make up these areas [2]. A hypothetical example would be to ask people to state the relative importance of security, employee satisfaction and delivering on time, which is sure to bring confused faces.…”

“…This paper presents a quantitative empirical case study, which combines the results from previously completed studies in the areas of software product quality using ISO 9126 [2] and IC [3] with new data. The extra step presented in this paper allows the previous results to be combined and compared in a comprehensive way, through a single list that shows the relative importance of the aspects that make up features, quality, time, cost and IC.…”