An Approach For Assessing The Quality Of Software For Small And Medium Sized Firms

Abstract: Software quality and flexible development approaches become increasingly important in software engineering to meet the wide range of frequently changing customer requirements in various application domains. Software development and assessment methods have caught the attention of software engineers and researchers worldwide. The quality of a process can be assessed by some external audits but they usually are heavyweight and costly processes. To measure the quality and follow the improvements in a process a lightweight assessment method is desired. This paper reports results from a study, which aims to organize, analyze and make sense out of the dispersed field of agile software development methods. The comparative analysis is performed using the method’s life-cycle coverage, project management support, type of practical guidance, fitness-for-use and empirical evidence as the analytical lenses. This paper mainly aims at Software Process Improvement (SPI) paradigm from the perspective of both Reference Process Models and the experience Factory (EF) infrastructures.

Keywords: Process Assessment, Agile, QIP, GQM, SPI