4 research outputs found
Practical Consequences of Quality Views in Assessing Software Quality
open access articleThe authors’ previously published research delved into the theory of software product
quality modelling, model views, concepts, and terminologies. They also analysed this specific field
from the point of view of uncertainty, and possible descriptions based on fuzzy set theory and fuzzy
logic. Laying a theoretical foundation was necessary; however, software professionals need a more
tangible and practical approach for their everyday work. Consequently, the authors devote this paper
to filling in this gap; it aims to illustrate how to interpret and utilise the previous findings, including
the established taxonomy of the software product quality models. The developed fuzzy model’s
simplification is also presented with a Generalized Additive Model approximation. The paper does
not require any formal knowledge of uncertainty computations and reasoning under uncertainty,
nor does it need a deep understanding of quality modelling in terms of terminology, concepts, and
meta-models, which were necessary to prepare the taxonomy and relevance ranking. The paper
investigates how to determine the validity of statements based on a given software product quality
model; moreover, it considers how to tailor and adjust quality models to the particular project’s needs.
The paper also describes how to apply different software product quality models for different quality
views to take advantage of the automation potential offered for the measurement and assessment of
source code quality. Furthermore, frequent pitfalls are illustrated with their corresponding resolutions,
including an unmeasured quality property that is found to be important and needs to be included in
the measurement and assessment process
Quality Properties of Execution Tracing, an Empirical Study
The authors are grateful to all the professionals who participated in the focus
groups; moreover, they also express special thanks to the management of the companies involved for
making the organisation of the focus groups possible.Data are made available in the appendix including the results of the
data coding process.The quality of execution tracing impacts the time to a great extent to locate errors in software components; moreover, execution tracing is the most suitable tool, in the majority of the cases, for doing postmortem analysis of failures in the field. Nevertheless, software product quality models do not adequately consider execution tracing quality at present neither do they define the quality properties of this important entity in an acceptable manner. Defining these quality properties would be the first step towards creating a quality model for execution tracing. The current research fills this gap by identifying and defining the variables, i.e., the quality properties, on the basis of which the quality of execution tracing can be judged. The present study analyses the experiences of software professionals in focus groups at multinational companies, and also scrutinises the literature to elicit the mentioned quality properties. Moreover, the present study also contributes to knowledge with the combination of methods while computing the saturation point for determining the number of the necessary focus groups. Furthermore, to pay special attention to validity, in addition to the the indicators of qualitative research: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability, the authors also considered content, construct, internal and external validity
Software Product Quality Models, Developments, Trends and Evaluation
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Software product quality models have evolved in their abilities to capture
and describe the abstract notion of software quality since the 1970’s. Many models
constructed deal with a specific part of software quality only which makes them ineligible
to assess the quality of software products as a whole. Former publications failed
to thoroughly examine and list all the available models which attempt to describe
each known property of software product quality. This paper discovers such complete
software product quality models published since 2000; moreover, it endeavours
to measure the relevance of each model quantitatively by introducing indicators with
regard to the scientific and industrial community. The identified 23 software product
quality model classes differ significantly in terms of publication intensity, publication
range, quality score average, relevance score and the 12-month average of the
Google Relative Search Index. The results offer a foundation for selecting the appropriate
software product quality model for use or for extension if newly identified
quality properties need to be connected to a general context. Furthermore, the experiences
accumulated on the field of software product quality modelling motivated
researchers to successfully transfer the concepts to other areas where abstract entities
need to be compared or assessed including the quality of higher educational teaching
and business processes, which is also briefly highlighted in the paper
Data Science Techniques for Modelling Execution Tracing Quality
This research presents how to handle a research problem when the research variables are still unknown, and
no quantitative study is possible; how to identify the research variables, to be able to perform a quantitative
research, how to collect data by means of the research variables identified, and how to carry out modelling
with the considerations of the specificities of the problem domain. In addition, validation is also encompassed
in the scope of modelling in the current study. Thus, the work presented in this thesis comprises the typical
stages a complex data science problem requires, including qualitative and quantitative research, data collection,
modelling of vagueness and uncertainty, and the leverage of artificial intelligence to gain such insights, which
are impossible with traditional methods.
The problem domain of the research conducted encompasses software product quality modelling, and assessment,
with particular focus on execution tracing quality. The terms execution tracing quality and logging are
used interchangeably throughout the thesis.
The research methods and mathematical tools used allow considering uncertainty and vagueness inherently
associated with the quality measurement and assessment process through which reality can be approximated
more appropriately in comparison to plain statistical modelling techniques. Furthermore, the modelling approach
offers direct insights into the problem domain by the application of linguistic rules, which is an additional
advantage.
The thesis reports (1) an in-depth investigation of all the identified software product quality models, (2) a
unified summary of the identified software product quality models with their terminologies and concepts, (3)
the identification of the variables influencing execution tracing quality, (4) the quality model constructed to
describe execution tracing quality, and (5) the link of the constructed quality model to the quality model of the
ISO/IEC 25010 standard, with the possibility of tailoring to specific project needs.
Further work, outside the frames of this PhD thesis, would also be useful as presented in the study: (1) to define
application-project profiles to assist tailoring the quality model for execution tracing to specific application and
project domains, and (2) to approximate the present quality model for execution tracing, within defined bounds,
by simpler mathematical approaches.
In conclusion, the research contributes to (1) supporting the daily work of software professionals, who need
to analyse execution traces; (2) raising awareness that execution tracing quality has a huge impact on software
development, software maintenance and on the professionals involved in the different stages of the software
development life-cycle; (3) providing a framework in which the present endeavours for log improvements
can be placed, and (4) suggesting an extension of the ISO/IEC 25010 standard by linking the constructed
quality model to that. In addition, in the scope of the qualitative research methodology, the current PhD thesis
contributes to the knowledge of research methods with determining a saturation point in the course of the data
collection process