Creating a Framework for Quality Decisions in Software Projects

This work analyzes the challenges that quality decisions represent to software project managers. Projects’ goals are normally determined by the paradigm of the Iron Triangle of project management. Managers need to know which are the effects of a quality assurance (QA) decision on the three axis: which effects in quality they can get but at what cost and which effects may appear in terms of schedule. This decision problem is clearly related to existing disciplines like SBSE, multi-objective optimization and methods for ROI calculation and value-based software engineering. This survey paper critically reviews the contributions of these disciplines to support QA decisions together with basic information from a pilot survey carried out as part of the developments of the Iceberg project funded by EU Programme Marie Curie.

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