Software Product Evaluation - Current status and future needs for customers and industry -

Evaluation of Information Technology is mostly considered as decision making on Information Technology investment proposals. However a selected investment proposal still has to be implemented. Actual realisation of such proposals is not as straightforward as it seems. Therefore activities must be started to manage conformance to the initial proposal. One of such activities is ‘Software Product Evaluation’. Software Product Evaluation is defined as the assessment of software product characteristics according to specified procedures. During a Software Product Evaluation the fit between the software product and the users’ needs of that product are determined. This fit concerns both explicit and implicit needs about the product. This is often referred to as ‘software product quality’. Software Product Evaluation becomes more popular both in industry and academics. Several evaluation techniques are already available, and others are being developed. This paper presents the current status of software product evaluation and points out the future needs. We conclude that three main areas can be distinguished on which more progress is necessary: building a quality profile, selecting appropriate actions during software implementation to address the quality profile, and designing and executing the evaluation activities.