An analysis of quality models as a foundation for software quality engineering

Software Quality Engineering is an emerging discipline that is concerned with improving the approach to software quality. lt is important that this discipline be firmly rooted in a quaiity model satisfying its needs. ln order to define the needs of this discipline, the meaning of quality is broadly defined by reviewing the literature on the subject. Software Quality Engineering needs a quality model that supports the specification of quality as well as its evaluation; it needs a quality model that is exhaustive and extensible; it needs a quality model that is widely applicable and usable throughout the software lifecycle. The goal of this research is to identify a quality model suitable for such a purpose. ln order to attain this goal, quality models are comparatively evaluated with respect to their support of Software Quality Engineering. ISO/IEC 9126 is selected as the most promising model and further evaluated. Through a more in depth analysis of the standard and its associated measures, it is found that although the framework behind ISO/IEC 9126 is clearly supportive of the needs of Software Quality Engineering, the quality measures associated with the model largely fail to meet expectations. Measures were found to be unsatisfying because a majority of them fail to be useful in setting quality goals and requirements. Recommendations on how to improve the measures are presented in detail