A specialisation of the SQuaRE quality model for the evaluation of the software evolution and maintenance activity

Abstract

One of the activities where companies invest the most today is software evolution and maintenance; in spite of this big effort, companies do not have a reliable and agreed model to evaluate the quality of maintenance activity and to monitor how their software evolves as a result of maintenance. Although the ISO/IEC SQuaRE quality model is well- known in industry and covers also maintenance issues, it is too general and too abstract to be directly applied; moreover some of the metrics that the model suggests are very difficult and expensive to apply. The purpose of this paper is to specialise the ISO/IEC SQuaRE quality model in order to make it easier to use for a company.