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3 Alternative Ways of Measuring Software Quality. Part II If you are looking for some alternative ways of measuring the quality of software development or perhaps even the quality of software testing of a certain kind (mobile testing, web site testing , desktop testing), there are some alternative methods you can focus on.
Alternative Ways of Estimating Software Quality: 1. Environmental measurements; 2. Product internal; 3. Activity measurements.
Let us focus on the latter two methods. Product internal method is used to describe different product internal characteristics. In the sphere of software engineering, this method is most studied and understood.
What Is Product Internal Method Based On? •
software components under investigation. Here belong product requirements, its design, program code, test cases, related documents etc.
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product (internal) components under investigation. Here belongs control (control flow paths), data (operand count) and presentation (like various indentation rules used).
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structure measurements. Some software components may be taken for the an unstructured heap of symbols (raw count such as LOC -line of code), or as syntactical structures (various control flow path measurements), or even as interconnected semantic entities (context-sensitive measures such as live data definitions).
Most measurements stated above can be given before software testing is conducted. Some are available already on the requirements and design phase. Compare this to the direct quality assessment method, where you cannot get this information before the software testing starts. Due to this fact, product internal method is often used to conduct the early product quality analysis in order to find the areas that may cause problems and later avoid them. As for activity measurements method, it focuses on software development and measurements activities and the resources (such as time and effort) spent on them. As contrasted to internal and environmental measurements methods, activity measurements are very dynamic.
Types of Activity Measurements: •
the project coarse-grain activity estimation. Here belong total effort and cycle-time that may be used in various models for general quality measurement as well as help with project release decisions.
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medium-grain activity estimation. It is used for individual development phases, as well as time periods that equal weeks or months.
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fine-grain activity estimation. It is used for individual activities.
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