Measuring the Impact of Quality Improvement in a Software Company

The quality issue is not only a matter of developing and implementing a quality system. It mandatory this system to function precisely on a long term basis. The evaluation of quality impact as a consequence of its improvement is a scary thing the quality specialists prefer to be apart due to its complexity. That’s the reason why the article emphasize on: the need and justification of quality impact evaluation, particularities of quality in software domain generated by its specificity, what evaluation of economic effects means in the context of a quality improvement particularly in a software company, a proposed method to calculate the impact of quality (on the costs structure), a practical example of how the method should be used and the results interpreted based on two simulated case.quality improvement; quality management; software industry; quality impact evaluation; measure quality.

PARTICULARITIES OF QUALITY EVALUATION IN A SOFTWARE COMPANY

Quality management is a management domain very discussed and disputed nowadays and this is the first sign it is a very modern, needed and present concept in theory and practice. Some are seeing it as a solution to prepare things in the way they are needed, and the instrument which might guarantee a proper environment of keeping them in a specified and constant form. The application of quality management is a quality management system that has to be designed, developed and implemented to achieve the aim of quality. The article has the purpose to briefly present what a quality management system should mean in a software company, why it should be periodically evaluated and how it might be done. In the second part it points out the characteristics of the audit as a general evaluation instrument and the main contribution consists on the author’s endeavor to mark out the particularities of an audit process carried out on a software company, considering the fact that particularization increases the changes to easier and earlier succeed with such an activity on a practical basis.Management, quality management, software quality, quality evaluation, quality audit

Model-driven performance evaluation for service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Software quality aspects such as performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and calculating performance metrics of the implemented software. We present an approach for the empirical, model-based performance evaluation of services and service compositions in the context of model-driven service engineering. Temporal databases theory is utilised for the empirical performance evaluation of model-driven developed service systems

Designing software to maximize learning1

This paper starts from the assumption that any evaluation of educational software should focus on whether or not, and the extent to which, it maximizes learning. It is particularly concerned with the impact of software on the quality of learning. The paper reviews key texts in the literature on learning, including some which relate directly to software development, and suggests ways in which a range of learning theories can inform the process of software design. The paper sets out to make a contribution to both the design and the evaluation of educational software

Early evaluation of security functionality in software projects - some experience on using the common criteria in a quality management process

This paper documents the experiences of assurance evaluation during the early stage of a large software development project. This project researches, contracts and integrates privacy-respecting software to business environments. While assurance evaluation with ISO 15408 Common Criteria (CC) within the certification schemes is done after a system has been completed, our approach executes evaluation during the early phases of the software life cycle. The promise is to increase quality and to reduce testing and fault removal costs for later phases of the development process. First results from the still-ongoing project suggests that the Common Criteria can define a framework for assurance evaluation in ongoing development projects.Dieses Papier dokumentiert den Versuch, mittels der Common Criteria nach ISO 15408 bereits während der Erstellung eines Softwaresystems dessen Sicherheitseigenschaften zu überprüfen. Dies geschieht im Gegensatz zur üblichen Post-Entwicklungs-Evaluation

Systematic evaluation of software product line architectures

The architecture of a software product line is one of its most important artifacts as it represents an abstraction of the products that can be generated. It is crucial to evaluate the quality attributes of a product line architecture in order to: increase the productivity of the product line process and the quality of the products; provide a means to understand the potential behavior of the products and, consequently, decrease their time to market; and, improve the handling of the product line variability. The evaluation of product line architecture can serve as a basis to analyze the managerial and economical values of a product line for software managers and architects. Most of the current research on the evaluation of product line architecture does not take into account metrics directly obtained from UML models and their variabilities; the metrics used instead are difficult to be applied in general and to be used for quantitative analysis. This paper presents a Systematic Evaluation Method for UML-based Software Product Line Architecture, the SystEM-PLA. SystEM-PLA differs from current research as it provides stakeholders with a means to: (i) estimate and analyze potential products; (ii) use predefined basic UML-based metrics to compose quality attribute metrics; (iii) perform feasibility and trade-off analysis of a product line architecture with respect to its quality attributes; and, (iv) make the evaluation of product line architecture more flexible. An example using the SEI’s Arcade Game Maker (AGM) product line is presented as a proof of concept, illustrating SystEM-PLA activities. Metrics for complexity and extensibility quality attributes are defined and used to perform a trade-off analysis