Integration of the software engineering theory and the quality function deployment methodology for supporting the measurement of the state of progress in software projects

Abstract

A fundamental practice to fulfill the objectives in a software project, is to measure its state of progress so that corrective actions can be taken timely. Most of approaches supporting measurement processes are focused on describing techniques to deal with these measurements from a project management perspective. However, these approaches lack of strategies that facilitate an adequate integration, understanding and application by professionals in software development area. In addition, the lack of rigor of such proposals hinders the establishment of common practices and give rise to unreliable results. This paper is aimed at providing an approach that satisfy the need of using frameworks standardized and easily adopted in order to support the measurement in the software development. To do this, we use the elements provided by SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory) and the procedures established by QFD (Quality Function Deployment) by generating a proposal which includes a representation standardized and a method to analyze the needs of measurement from customer perspective. Also, a mapping review and a study based on interviews intended to assure the reliability of the findings exhibited in this paper were done.