Abstract
Different software product quality models interpret different amounts of information, i.e., they can capture and address different manifestations of software quality. This characteristic can cause misleading statements and misunderstandings while explaining or comparing the results of software product quality assessments. A total of 23 previously identified distinct software product quality models are analysed on how they handle the abstract notion of quality, and a taxonomy on the quality manifestations that the individual software product quality models are able to capture is established. Quality models that are able to solely describe the quality manifestation of the source code are attractive due to their full automation potential through static code analysers, but their assessment results ignore a huge part of software product quality, which is the one that most impresses the end user. The manifestations of software product quality that address the behaviour of the software while it operates, or the perception of the end user with regard to the software in use, require human involvement in the quality assessment. The taxonomy contributes to interpreting the quality assessment results of different quality models by showing the possible quality manifestations that can be captured by the identified models; moreover, the taxonomy also provides assistance while selecting a quality model for a given project. The quality manifestations used for the quality measurement always need to be presented, otherwise the quality assessment results cannot be interpreted in an appropriate manner.
Highlights
The differences in this ability of the identified software product quality models are introduced in the present paper to assist with the decision of whether a particular quality model is suitable for a specific task or whether the statement based on a specific software product quality model holds for software quality in general
An important aspect of the quality models is their ability to measure the properties of software products; software product quality models are involved in the study; some quality models exhibit properties to assess the process by which the software products come into existence
SQUALE, COQUALMO and STAC models are classified as quality models with internal and external quality views in Table 2: SQUALE [20] possesses different metrics and practices related to distinct test levels; COQUALMO [54,55] comprises a defect introduction and removal sub-model, which assumes the software to be operational; the STAC
Summary
The quality models applied and their concrete implementations differ significantly in terms of the ability to capture the manifestations of software quality. The differences in this ability of the identified software product quality models are introduced in the present paper to assist with the decision of whether a particular quality model is suitable for a specific task or whether the statement based on a specific software product quality model holds for software quality in general. Following the terminology of the ISO/IEC 9126 standard and its successor ISO/IEC 25010 [6,7], the quality manifestations the software product quality models are able to capture are called quality views in this paper, by which a unified terminology is laid down. Creating a unified terminology is necessary, as some software product quality models, including ADEQUATE [8,9], FURPS+ [10,11,12], GEQUAMO [13], reflect the opinions of different stakeholders, which are directly or indirectly referred to as quality views in the model definition documents
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