4. User’s Perspective Quality Factors
Here, different characteristics of software product developed at software development companies are considered and checked; a number of such characteristics are taken into consideration by the end users. In it, the list of the software characteristics, considered by the end users and which affect their emotions are taken into consideration.
4.1 Functionality
The main idea of any software product is to perform specific business functionality. Thus, the performance of the software product is considered as crucial factor in the software quality, which identifies whether the software is really usable or not, by not considering the values of other software quality factors and functions. The critical role of the software presents whether the software product is apt, the result is correct, and whether some standard is followed in order to perform the required functions. The adaptability of the software presents how the system fit the developer’s requirements. Therefore, the suitability evaluates the ability of the software product to produce desired result and appropriate for a specified environment.
Software accuracy is defined as the ability of the software products to achieve its requirements, by bringing accurate output as per requirement of the system core developer. The software accuracy also affects the process continuity, system safety, total cost and maintainability. The compliance represents whether the system has followed any standard or certificates to achieve the user requirements.
4.2 Reliability
The reliability of the software represents the ability to perform the intended function properly without any failures. That is maintaining a level of services under specific condition within specific period of time during systems operation. Thus, the reliability measures the failures occurred in the software product within defined period of time.
Moreover, the reliability considered in the information and the system function safety harms that may be caused by the unauthorized people. Therefore, the reliability of the software product consists of several characteristics: the integrity, the maturity and the fault recovery.
4.3 Performance
Software performance is the most affected software characteristic, which gets affected by everything in the system product, from software characteristics to the system environment such as the operating system, the middleware, the hardware and the communication networks. System performance is a make-or break quality for software, which is an important nonfunctional attribute of software systems for producing quality software, that considers the run time property.
System performance is characterized by the amount of useful work accomplished by a system compared to the time and resources used. The performance factor is thus destined to evaluate whether the software application is running efficiently on the computing resources available or not.
The performance factor represents the degree of the system efficiency to produce desired result during system operation time. This degree is thus represented by combination of software and hardware attributes which influence on the time of answer and the range of the software services coverage.
4.4 Usability
As per the ACM the usability engineering (called human-computer interaction engineering) is defined as “a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and the study of major phenomena surrounding them”.
As per the software life cycle phases, usability characteristics were classified into three main categories: Interface characteristics, training, and operation supportability.
4.5 Transferability/Portability
Software transferability expresses the ability of the software to work properly in different type of platforms. It deals with the effort required to transfer a program from one hardware configuration and/or software system environment to another with slight modification. Thus this characteristic refers to how the software can be adopted to change its environment or with its requirements in software development companies.
Author:
Shreyans Agrawal (ifour.shreyans.agrawal@gmail.com)
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