Software Qualities Software Product

Software engineering (SE) is an intellectual • Different from traditional types of products

activity and thus human-intensive – intangible
• difficult to describe and evaluate
Software is built to meet a certain functional
goal and satisfy certain qualities – malleable
Software processes also must meet certain – human intensive
qualities • involves only trivial “manufacturing” process

Software qualities are sometimes referred to

as ilities

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Classification of SW Qualities Classification of SW Qualities

Internal vs. External Product vs. Process
• External Factors • Product - what is delivered to a customer
May be detected by users of the software
• Process - used to produce a product
• Internal Factors
Only perceptible to computer professionals

Process quality affects product quality

Internal factors are the key to assuring that
the external factors will be satisfied
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Correctness The Limits of Correctness

• Correctness is the ability of software
products to perform their task exactly as • It is an absolute (yes/no) quality
defined by their requirements and – there is no concept of “degree of correctness”
specification – there is no concept of severity of deviation
– assuming that a specification exists!
• What if specifications are wrong?
• If specifications are formal, since programs
– (e.g., they derive from incorrect requirements
are formal objects, correctness can be
or errors in domain knowledge)
defined formally
– It can be proven as a theorem or disproved by
counterexamples (testing)

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 Reliability
Idealized Situation

• Reliability • Requirements are correct

– informally, user can depend on it
– can be defined mathematically as “probability of
absence of failures for a certain time period”
– if specs are correct, all correct software is
reliable, but not vice-versa (in practice, however,
specs can be incorrect …)
Reliability
Correctness

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Robustness
Performance
• Performance is a measure of the efficient
• Robustness use of resources
– software behaves “reasonably” even in – memory, processing time, communication
unforeseen circumstances (e.g., incorrect • Can be verified
input, hardware failure) • complexity analysis of algorithms used
• performance evaluation (measurement, analysis,
simulation)
• Performance can affect scalability
• a solution that works on a small local network may
not work on a large intranet

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Usability Verifiability

• A system is usable if its expected users find
the system easy to use
• Often called “user-friendliness”
• Rather subjective, difficult to evaluate
• Affected mostly by user interface
• e.g., visual vs. textual
• Verifiability is the ease of preparing
acceptance procedures, particularly test data
and procedures for detecting and tracing
failures
– mostly an internal quality
– can be external as well (e.g., security critical
application)

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 Maintainability Maintainability
• Maintainability: ease of maintenance
• Maintenance: changes after release • Can be decomposed as
Maintenance costs exceed 60% of total cost – Repairability
of software • ability to correct defects in reasonable time

Three main categories of maintenance – Evolvability

• ability to adapt sw to environment changes and to
corrective: removing residual errors (20%)
improve it in reasonable time
adaptive: adjusting to environment changes
(20%)
perfective: quality improvements (>50%)

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Reusability Portability

• Existing product (or components) used
(with minor modifications) to build another
product
– (Similar to evolvability)
• Also applies to process
• Reuse of standard parts is a measure of the
maturity of the field
(numeric libraries, graphic tool boxes)
• Portability - the ease with which software
products may be transferred to different
hardware and software environments
• Remains relevant as new platforms and
environments are introduced (e.g. digital
assistants)
• Relevant when downloading software in a
heterogeneous network environment

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Understandability Interoperability

• Ease of understanding software Ability of a system to coexist and cooperate

• Program modification requires program with other systems
understanding e.g., word processor and spreadsheet
Open systems allow different applications,
written by different organizations, to
interoperate

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 Product and Process Qualities Software Product
• Object Code
• Product - what is delivered to a customer • User’s Manual
• Requirements
• Process - used to produce a product • Design
• Source Code
• Test Data

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Process Qualities Process Qualities

• Evolvability - the process must be able to
accommodate new management and
organizational techniques, changes in
engineering education, availability of new
techniques, etc...
• Visibility - a measure of how clearly all
steps and the current status of the process
are documented
• Reusability - various software
methodologies are attempts to reuse the
same process for building different products
• Productivity - measures the efficiency of a
process
• Timeliness - the ability to deliver a product
on time

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Timeliness:
Timeliness Issues Visual Description of the Mismatch

• Often the development process does not

follow the evolution of user requirements Function
User
• A mismatch occurs between user needs
Actual
requirements and status of the product system
capabilities

t2 Time
t0 t1 t3 t4

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 Application-Specific Qualities Quality Measurement

• E.g., information systems • Many qualities are subjective

Data integrity • No standard metrics defined for most
Security qualities
Data availability
Transaction performance.

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Seven Principles

• Rigor and Formality

• Separation of Concerns
• Modularity
• Abstraction
• Anticipation of Change
• Generality
• Incrementality
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