Model-Based Quality Management of Software Development Projects

Managing the quality of artifacts created during the development process is an integral part of software project management. Software quality models capture the knowledge and experience regarding the quality characteristics of interest, the measurement data that can help to reason about them, and the mechanisms to use for characterizing and assessing software quality. They are the foundation for managing software quality in projects in an evidence-based manner. Nowadays, coming up with suitable quality models for an organization is still a challenging endeavor. This chapter deals with the definition and usage of software quality models for managing software development projects and discusses different challenges and solutions in this area. The challenges are: (1) There is no universal model that can be applied in every environment because quality is heavily dependent on the application context. In practice and research, a variety of different quality models exists. Finding the “right” model requires a clear picture of the goals that should be obtained from using the model. (2) Quality models need to be tailored to company specifics and supported by corresponding tools. Existing standards (such as the ISO/IEC 25000 series) are often too generic and hard to fully implement in an organization. (3) Practitioners require a comprehensive set of techniques, methods, and tools for systematically specifying, adapting, and applying quality models in practice. (4) In order to create sustainable quality models, their contribution to the organizational goals must be clarified, and the models need to be integrated into the development and decision-making processes.