An Integrated Graphical Assessment for Managing Software Product Quality

Assessing software product quality has become more and more relevant and important to managers, even though it is still challenging to define and measure the detailed quality criteria and to integrate them into quality models. Software engineering standards can help establish a common language for these detailed criteria and, in parallel, implement a model of quality from its high-level concepts down to its lowest level of measurable details; in particular, the revised ISO/IEC 9126 suite of standards represents a useful taxonomy and framework for specifying software product quality. Several frameworks and techniques are being built on the basis of these standards. In particular, the GDQA (Graphical Dynamic Quality Assessment) framework and the QFD (Quality Factor through QFD) technique have been proposed to tackle software product quality analysis and measurement. This paper examines the structure of both and integrates them into an Integrated Graphical Assessment of Quality (IGQ) technique supporting quality assessments and related improvements through the full software lifecycle.