Modelling Revisions of Users' Perception of Software Quality (original) (raw)

Measuring user’s perception and opinion of software quality

1998

This paper presents a method for modeling users' perception of software quality. The method aims to improve the quality of data derived from user opinion surveys and facilitate the analysis of such data. Additionally, using aspects of Belief Revision theory, the proposed model offers a way to measure users' opinion in early stages of product release and a way of predicting the opinion subsequently formed after their opinion revisions using the initial measurements. The paper presents graphical examples from modeling users' perception of software quality and of handling the users' belief revision. Finally, conclusions from our case studies and data analysis are presented.

Early Estimation of Users’ Perception of Software Quality

Software Quality Journal, 2005

This paper presents a methodology for estimating users' opinion of the quality of a software product. Users' opinion changes with time as they progressively become more acquainted with the software product. In this paper, we study the dynamics of users' opinion and offer a method for assessing users' final perception, based on measurements in the early stages of product release. The paper also presents methods for collecting users' opinion and from the derived data, shows how their initial belief state for the quality of the product is formed. It adapts aspects of Belief Revision theory in order to present a way of estimating users' opinion, subsequently formed after their opinion revisions, using the initial measurements and without having to conduct surveys frequently. It reports the correlation that users tend to infer among quality characteristics and represents this correlation through a determination of a set of constraints between the scores of each quality characteristic. Finally, this paper presents a fast and automated way of forming users' new belief state for the quality of a product after examining their opinion revisions.

MEASUREMENT MODEL OF SOFTWARE QUALITY IN USER'S PERCEPTION

An increasing emphasis on consumer demand and expanded development budgets of software development firms fuel the need to upgrade software quality. Software quality is largely measured by quality standards and guidelines. This paper presents a method for modeling users' perception of software quality. The method aims to improve the quality of data derived from user opinion surveys and facilitate the analysis of such data. The proposed model offers a way to measure users' opinion in early stages of product release and a way of predicting the opinion subsequently formed after their opinion revisions using the initial measurements. Therefore, this work develops a conceptual software quality measurement model for evaluating software quality to decrease the perceptive and expectative (or quality) measuring gap between a software development firm and the end user's requirements.

An Approach to Measuring Software Quality Perception

2009

Perception measuring and perception management is an emerging approach in the area of product management. Cognitive, psychological, behavioral and neurological theories, tools and methods are being employed for a better understanding of the mechanisms of a consumer’s attitude and decision processes. Software is also being defined as a product, however this kind of product is significantly different from all other products. Software products are intangible and it is difficult to trace their characteristics which are strongly dependant on a dynamic context of use. Understanding customer’s cognitive processes gives an advantage to the producers aiming to develop products “winning the market”. Is it possible to adopt theories, methods and tools for the purpose of software perception, especially software quality perception? The theoretical answer to this question seems to be easy, however in practice the list of differences between software products and software projects hinders the analysis of certain factors and their influence on the overall perception. In this article the authors propose a method and describe a tool designed for the purpose of research regarding perception issues of software quality. The tool is designed to defeat the above stated problem, adopting the modern behavioral economics approach.

The measurement of consumer attitudes concerning software quality

This paper is concerned with the development of an instrument aimed at the measurement of consumer attitudes concerning software quality. The operationalization of the construct software quality includes the dimensions of communication, completeness, features, flexibility, independence, simplicity, stability, and maturity. Ordinal scale development methods are used to develop objective, operational measures of these dimensions. An on-line, Internet-based survey tool was developed to facilitate the large number of responses required for survey validation. The instrument will help solve important problems of software development productivity, software engineering research and survey research. Results show that relevant software consumer attitudes can be consistently and reliably observed and quantified. Results also confirm earlier studies that report benefits from the use of computer-mediated communication for survey research.

Software Quality Evaluation: User’s View

Nowadays, software products rapidly increased and it is usage not limited to specific people or corporation. It is now used in the most of human life activities. Therefore, the quality of the software product is increasingly being important and the users demanding higher quality than ever before. However, most of this research is focused on the internal/development view of quality. Hence, in software development, strong attention must be given to the user's satisfaction. Recently, the studies intend to understand the users' perspective of the software quality. In this study, we intend to discuss the characteristics of the software products that influence the users' satisfaction on software quality. Based on the well-known software quality models and the emotion of the software users, a model of software quality evaluation based on users' views is proposed.

Software Quality Perception

2008

This article analysis non-technical aspects of software quality perception and proposes further research activities for this subject naming this branch Software Quality Psychology. Cognitive science, psychology, micro economics and other human-oriented sciences do analyze human behavior, cognition and decision processes. On the other hand engineering disciplines, including software engineering, propose many formal and technical approaches for product quality description. Linkage between technical and subjective quality has been subject of research in areas related to food and agricultural applications and in this article we propose analysis of professional product perception which beyond doubt is a software product.

A Review on Models for Software Quality Enhancement from User's Perspective

Researchpedia Journal of Computing , 2021

Nowadays industries are more determined to improve the quality of software products. The concentration of researchers is more towards internal quality enhancement. Less attention has been given to the quality's definition from the user's perspective. The user wants to meet his goal with satisfaction that depends upon the usability of the software product. The progress of software organizations relies on the satisfaction of the user. Our focus is to explore the software model of quality factors from the user's view. In this study, various existing software models that are proposed by different researchers for quality are reviewed and discussed. The comparative analysis of the quality attributes of these models is represented. We selected the benchmark of the ISO 9126 model for surveying different university students to rank the quality attitudes from the user's view. We have proposed a user's perspective quality model based on survey results. The proposed quality model is made up of quality factors with their respected sub factors (1) Functionality with accurateness, interoperability, and compliance (2) Reliability with recoverability, maturity, and fault tolerance (3) Usability with clarity, easy to operate and practicable (4) Efficiency with resource behavior and execution efficiency (5) Maintainability with simplicity, changeability and testability and (6) Portability with installability, coexistence, and replaceability. The future challenges related to our research area are mentioned at the end.

Users' Perspective of Software Quality

2000

In last decade, software engineering research increasingly focused on software quality enhancement and evaluation, whereas most of these researches concentrate on the internal/ development perspective. However, users mainly care in the quality of performs intended functions efficiently without knowing how the software product was developed, how it is work from inside, or it is internal quality. The success of software companies is completely depends on the users' satisfaction, which they decide to use a software product or not. Therefore, in software development, strong attention must be given to the user's satisfaction. This study aims to present the quality of the software products from user's perspective. From user's viewpoint, the characteristics of the software product are discussed. Finally, a user's perspective quality model is proposed.

Tests for consistent measurement of external subjective software quality attributes

Empirical Software Engineering, 2008

One reason that researchers may wish to demonstrate that an external software quality attribute can be measured consistently is so that they can validate a prediction system for the attribute. However, attempts at validating prediction systems for external subjective quality attributes have tended to rely on experts indicating that the values provided by the prediction systems informally agree with the experts' intuition about the attribute. These attempts are undertaken without a pre-defined scale on which it is known that the attribute can be measured consistently. Consequently, a valid unbiased estimate of the predictive capability of the prediction system cannot be given because the experts' measurement process is not independent of the prediction system's values. Usually, no justification is given for not checking to see if the experts can measure the attribute consistently. It seems to be assumed that: subjective measurement isn't proper measurement or subjective measurement cannot be quantified or no one knows the true values of the attributes anyway and they cannot be estimated. However, even though the classification of software systems' or software artefacts' quality attributes is subjective, it is possible to quantify experts' measurements in terms of conditional probabilities. It is then possible, using a statistical approach, to assess formally whether the experts' measurements can be considered consistent. If the measurements are consistent, it is also possible to identify estimates of the true values, which are independent of the prediction system. These values can then be used to assess the predictive capability of the prediction system. In this paper we use Bayesian inference, Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation and missing data imputation to develop statistical tests for consistent measurement of subjective ordinal scale attributes.