A Framework for Software Quality Evaluation
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This paper reports on a quantitative study, which examines the link between software characteristics, sought after consequences and personal values in software evaluation, whilst investigating the stakeholders' understanding of software quality. The study involved a survey of 403 subjects, which were then analyzed quantitatively with bi-variate analysis, and multivariate analysis of variance. The research argues that trade-offs in software development projects are often experienced in software development because of conflicts. These conflicts involve schedules, priorities and are very much caused by the different stakeholder views of quality, different desired consequences sought by the different stakeholders and more importantly influenced by the desired values of the different stakeholders. The research finds that different classes of stakeholders have different views of software quality. The research also finds that certain values sought by the stakeholder influences their sought after consequences required in the developed software product. However, it is not just any values that affect the stakeholder, but rather, it is the values affected by the evaluated software, which influences the selection of characteristics and sought after consequences. Values, which are important, but are not affected by software use, do not influence the stakeholder. As such, these results help us gain a better understanding of what types of values influence the choice of characteristics in software evaluation, and the desired consequences in a software product, and why conflicts exist during software development life-cycle. The results provide a number of important insights and suggest several conclusions. The study showed (1) that stakeholders differ in their priorities in the sought after consequences of the software being developed; (2) that the desired values, which are perceived to be affected by the software differ between stakeholders and influence the choice of characteristic and consequence; (3) that the consequence, value relationship as described in the Software Evaluation Framework can be valuable to understand the conflicts and trade-offs fond in software development.