In search for a widely applicable and accepted software quality model for software quality engineering

Software Quality Engineering is an emerging discipline that is concerned with improving the approach to software quality. It is important that this discipline be firmly rooted in a quality model satisfying its needs. In 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 is usable throughout the software lifecycle and that it embraces all the perspectives of quality. The goal of this paper is to propose the characteristics of a quality model suitable for such a purpose, through the comparative evaluation of existing quality models and their respective support for Software Quality Engineering.     

Requirements Engineering and Process Modelling in Software Quality Management— Towards a Generic Process Metamodel

This paper examines the concept of Quality in Software Engineering, its different contexts and its different meanings to various people. It begins with a commentary on quality issues for systems development and various stakeholders' involvement. It revisits aspects and concepts of systems development methods and highlights the relevance of quality issues to the choice of a process model. A summarised review of some families of methods is presented, where their application domain, lifecycle coverage, strengths and weaknesses are considered. Under the new development era the requirements of software development change; the role of methods and stakeholders change, too. The paper refers to the latest developments in the area of software engineering and emphasises the shift from traditional conceptual modelling to requirements engineering and process metamodelling principles. We provide support for an emerging discipline in the form of a software process metamodel to cover new issues for software quality and process improvement. The widening of the horizons of software engineering both as a communication tool and as a scientific discipline (and not as a craft) is needed in order to support both communicative and scientific quality systems properties. In general, we can consider such a discipline as a thinking tool for understanding the generic process and as the origin of combining intuition and quality engineering to transform requirements to adequate human-centred information systems. We conclude with a schematic representation of a Generic Process Metamodel (GPM) indicating facets contributed by Software Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, Linguistics, Sociology and Anthropology. Ongoing research and development issues have provided evidence for influence from even more diverse disciplines.     

Empirical Measurement of the Effects of Cultural Diversity on Software Quality Management

The difficulties of achieving social acceptance for Software Quality Management systems have been underestimated in the past, and they will be exacerbated in the future by the globalization of the software market and the increasing use of cross-cultural development teams within multinational companies. Management that can take account of the cultural context of their endeavours will improve understanding, minimize risk and ensure a higher degree of success in improvement programs within the software industry.This paper addresses cross-cultural issues in Software Quality Management. Qualitative and quantitative research was carried out in five European countries by using a postal questionnaire. Empirical measures of organizational culture, national culture and their interdependence, are presented together with interim instruments developed for the purpose of classifying organizations. Verification of the statistical results from the survey was carried out by triangulation, which included qualitative research methods in the form of interviews and observation. Cultural factors, which may have bearing on successful adoption and implementation of Software Quality Management were identified, and an assessment model, has been developed for use by organizations developing software in different parts of the world. The intention is that the recommendations following from the assessment will lead to greater cultural awareness in addressing quality, and will provide stimulus for improvement. The model's aims is to predict to what degree there is a fit between the organizational and the national culture, and to give recommendations and guidelines for software process improvement.     

Modeling emergency evacuation for major hazard industrial sites

A model providing the temporal and spatial distribution of the population under evacuation around a major hazard facility is developed. A discrete state stochastic Markov process simulates the movement of the evacuees. The area around the hazardous facility is divided into nodes connected among themselves with links representing the road system of the area. Transition from node-to-node is simulated as a random process where the probability of transition depends on the dynamically changed states of the destination and origin nodes and on the link between them. Solution of the Markov process provides the expected distribution of the evacuees in the nodes of the area as a function of time. A Monte Carlo solution of the model provides in addition a sample of actual trajectories of the evacuees. This information coupled with an accident analysis which provides the spatial and temporal distribution of the extreme phenomenon following an accident, determines a sample of the actual doses received by the evacuees. Both the average dose and the actual distribution of doses are then used as measures in evaluating alternative emergency response strategies. It is shown that in some cases the estimation of the health consequences by the average dose might be either too conservative or too non-conservative relative to the one corresponding to the distribution of the received dose and hence not a suitable measure to evaluate alternative evacuation strategies.     

The design and evaluation of a computerized adaptive test on mobile devices

The use of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) has expanded rapidly over recent years mainly due to the advances in communication and information technology. Availability of advanced mobile technologies provides several benefits to e-learning by creating an additional channel of access with mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. This paper describes the design issues that were considered for the development and the implementation of a CAT on mobile devices, the computerized adaptive test on mobile devices (CAT-MD). Throughout the development of the system, formative evaluation was an integral part of the design methodology. The recommendations, suggestions and the results of the formative evaluation were used to improve the system in order to make the assessment procedure more effective and efficient. These results of the formative evaluation are also presented here.