Introduction of Japan's investigation activities on systems and software product quality metrics

Abstract

In order to realize an environment where safe and secure system/software products can be used in daily life and social economic activities, it is required to visualize the quality of the product, evaluate whether it meets the user's needs objectively and achieve quality target. So, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan (METI), Advanced Research Project on Software Metrics - Product Quality Metrics Working Group (WG) has worked on establishing metrics (the term is used to refer to base measures, derived measures and indexes as a batch. In this paper, metric is used to describe the measured volume.) that can be used commonly for these activities and summarized the contents in order to promote quality assurance activity. First of all the WG organized discussions related to metrics in order to clarify the quality of various system/software products existing in Japan, and aggregated characteristics of metrics and mutual relationship.Then, for the objective of establishing the quality of system/software products meeting the users' needs and to select metrics that can be used commonly for establishment, the in-depth research was performed and investigation was held for basic activities from quality requirement definition to quality evaluation and metrics recommended for use for each quality characteristic. This paper described the pertinent contents.