Customer-oriented Planning Of CASE-toolsUsing Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Software products often do not satisfy customer expectations. This is especially true for CASE tools. Much of the success of Japanese companies particularly in meeting customer expectations is commonly attributed to their employment of simultaneous engineering. Simultaneous engineering uses a synchronous definition of product-design and production-processes based on customer’s requests and interdisciplinary team work in the company. QFD is the backbone of simultaneous product-planning. OFD was originally developed for industrial production. This paper describes a case study of applying QFD to the planning of a CASE-Tool and demonstrates how to use and adapt the QFD method for application to software products. * veroffentlicht in: Software Quality Management III: Vol. 1 Quality Management, Hrsg.: M. Ross, C.A. Brebbia, G. Staples, J. Stapleton, 1995, Southampton-Boston, Seiten 429-440 430 Software Quality Management 1. Customer-Orientation of CASE Tool Producers According to Gartner-Group only ten European companies are among the world’s hundred largest software-houses. The CASE-Tool market is dominated by American producers, too. There has not been much research about the reasons for this dominance. The Irish Software Department for example mentions the following reasons: insufficient marketing and a lack of customer-orientation in Europe. Research at the University of Cologne proves, that CASE tool providers are often more technology oriented than customer-oriented. They strive to offer newest technology and elaborate functionality, while customers give highest priority to non functional requirements like user friendliness and adaptability. [1] Frequently CASE tool providers seem to be engaged in missionary activities as in the following example. The client demanded the capability to print out an entity relation ship diagram distributed on several sheets of paper. This request was rejected by the CASE tool producer with the argument, that a „good“ entity relation ship diagram should fit onto one sheet of paper. This and similar examples demonstrate that the discrepancies between customer expectations and product characteristics rely in a lack of customer-orientation. Often the tool is a laboratory invention, which was never confronted with a systematic analysis of customer needs and wants or the known customer requirements have not been properly deployed. 2. Basic Principles of CASE Tool Planning In the end it is up to the customer to decide about success or failure of a product. Where the determining factor is the customer’s perception of the value the product creates in his application. For a CASE tool this means that it is relevant whether the tool is useful in the customer’s environment not whether it is useful in a fictitious software process under fictitious conditions. Figure 1 illustrates the value as perceived by the customer. Software Quality Management 431 functionality value (%)