A New Approach to Measuring Information Systems Quality

Abstract

As the investment in and dependence on information technology grows, organizations have become increasingly aware of the need to ensure system, software, and information quality. Despite continuous efforts to improve system and software development, controlling quality remains difficult in today's environment. The complexity of assessing information system quality stems from its many important dimensions. Using as a starting point the well-known model of system quality developed by DeLone and McLean (2003), this study's goals are to translate these constructs into an overall measure of system quality to be used in practice, and examine the content validity of measures to assess information system quality using expert judges. In-depth structured discussions with top managers, members of the user community, and various information systems (IS) personnel roles were used to collect knowledge. From these interviews the need to add an IS perspective and a corporate perspective to the assessment of system quality was identified by personnel in all six host organizations. The discussions reveal that a standard measure for system quality is not advisable. The quality of different systems must be measured in terms of the features that are important to the system objectives and user/management expectations. Thus, for a particular system, a measure of importance for each item becomes important to compute a weighted average for overall system quality. The expanded measure for system quality provides the vehicle for a quick, comprehensive, and valid assessment.