Analysis of the Meanings of the Measurement, Assessment, and Evaluation in ISO/IEEE Software Engineering Standards

Software engineering international standards have been developed to eliminate the gaps between the practitioners in understanding and implementing the software engineering terms and techniques. However, in presence of the coordination lack between the standardization bodies and even between the different workgroups within the same standardization body, some of these standards came up with a set of conflicted definitions and meanings of the same terms. Thus, this will make it difficult or impossible for the practitioners to implement such standards in a correct and rigorous way. In this paper, the meanings of the ‘measurement’, ‘assessment’, and ‘evaluation’ terms and the relationship between them in different ISO and IEEE standards will be discussed. Key-Words: Software Measurement, Software Assessment, Software Evaluation, Software Product Quality, ISO Standards, IEEE Standards, Software Engineering Standards.