A Threefold User-Based Software Evaluation Framework

While pressured to release new software to market, software development organization often find themselves choosing between quality and timeliness. From a business perspective, success is determined to a significant extent by the perceptions of quality exhibited by consumers with respect to the software product being offered. In this context, we propose taxonomy of software users and design a user-centered software evaluation framework to support software quality assessment processes. An online survey is conducted for exploring software users’ perceptions of quality and the results are used to define three categories of software users. The findings of this study shed new light on the way software development organizations should perceive the relationship with their consumers and, consequently, on the way they should manage development projects. The contributions to both research and practice stem from the proposing of a new and more detailed approach to defining and measuring software system quality and its associated assessment processes.