Software Testing and User Reaction

As pointed out in Chap. 4, user participation is the only means to guarantee that the soft-ware developed in the course of a software project reaches a certain quality standard. However, the common understanding is that “… a software product, as object of evaluation, does not lend itself (in the current state of the art of software engineering) to any empirical-analytical investigation like the usual products of handicraft and industry” (Christ et al. 1984/ii). Thus the first step in developing a user-oriented evaluation approach for TWB was to define the term “quality” as precisely as possible.