SPQmm : a software product quality maturity model using ISO/IEEE standards, metrology, and sigma concepts

In the software engineering literature, there are numerous maturity models for assessing and evaluating a set of software processes. By contrast, there is no corresponding maturity model for assessing the quality of a software product. The design of such a model to assess the quality of a software product therefore represents a new research challenge in software engineering. Our main goal is to make available to industry (and consumers) a maturity model for assessing and improving the quality of the software product. This Software Product Quality Maturity Model (SPQMM) consists of three quality maturity submodels (viewpoints) that can be used not only once the software product has been delivered, but also throughout the life-cycle: • Software Product Internal Quality Maturity Model- SPIQMM, • Software Product External Quality Maturity Model - SPEQMM, and • Software Product Quality-in-Use Maturity Model- SPQiUMM In this thesis, we introduce the Software Product Quality Maturity Model (SPQMM), which could be used from three different viewpoints: the software product internal quality, the software product external quality, and the software product quality in-use. This quality maturity model is a quantitative model, and it based on the ISO 9126(software product quality measures), ISO 15026 (software integrity levels), IEEE Std. 1012 (software verification and validation) and on six-sigma concepts. To build such a quality maturity model, we have combined the set of quality measures into a single number for each quality characteristic by assuming that all the measures for a single quality characteristic have an equal weight in the computation of a single value for that quality characteristic (they all make an equal contribution), yielding a quality level for that quality characteristic. The resulting quality level is then transformed based on the software integrity level into a sigma value positioned within a quality maturity level