Strategic drivers of software quality: beyond external and internal software quality

Abstract

Software quality is often considered in terms of the contractual requirements between the supplier and acquirer as described in ISO/IEC 12207 and focuses on software life cycle processes. However, beyond these processes acquirer organisations need to address other issues like complying with new legislation, securing return on investment, and achieving competitive support from their new software investments. Supplier organisations also have issues that they must manage. This paper addresses all of these issues and presents eleven issues, which it calls strategic drivers. Then, using the SOFTWARE QUALITY STAR, builds a new conceptual model where each strategic quality driver is defined and explained.