This thesis describes an investigation of the possibility to apply a maintenance concept originally developed for the industry, on software maintenance. Today a large amount of software development models exist but not many of them treat maintenance as a part of the software life cycle. In most cases maintenance is depicted as an activity towards the end of the software life cycle. The high cost ascribed to software maintenance motivates for improvements. The maintenance concept TQMain proposed in this thesis distinguishes from other maintenance concepts by its use of preventive, predictive and proactive maintenance strategies. TQMain uses a common database to store real-time data from various departments and uses it for analyse and assessment to track the development of deviations in the condition of the production process and product quality at an early stage. A continuous cyclic improvement of the maintenance strategy is reached by comparing the data from the real-time measurements with data from the database. The ISO/IEC Software engineering – Product qualities is used as a source of empiric data to conclude that the correct quality characteristics are used for identifying software product quality and its characteristics and compare them with the characteristics of industrial product quality. The results presented are that in the conceptual outline of TQMain measures are obviously not the same as in software maintenance, but the aspect of product quality is common for both. The continuous cyclic improvement of the product quality that TQMain features together with the aspect of detecting potential failures before they occur would, judging from the conceptual outline of TQMain be applicable on software maintenance.

Enterprise portals are comprehensive solutions that enable centralized access to information and employees. They also support the business processes taking place in companies. The diversity of functionality offered by enterprise portals is the source of the complexity of the manufacturing process of such applications. Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) are a novel approach to solving problems associated with the software development. By limiting the possibilities of expression to the concepts related to a specific area Domain-Specific Languages are more focused on solving specific problems. The subject of this thesis is DSL SharePoint – Domain-Specific Language which supports the production of enterprise portals on Microsoft SharePoint platform. Language was developed with respect to the newest achievements in area of building DSLs. By applying the language in the industry, it was possible to verify the hypothesis that its usage positively affects the quality of software products. To this end, the quality model was built, and products made with the support of language have been compared to those developed in the traditional manner.

Diversos negócios hoje são suportados por sistemas de software. Acredita-se que o uso de Arquitetura de Software é fundamental para atingir alcançar as metas de negócio e qualidade. Visto que o conjunto de requisitos que levou à construção de uma determinada arquitetura pode mudar, tal arquitetura pode tornar-se inadequada. Em diversas situações é preciso conviver com os sistemas existentes, portanto é preciso alterá-los para as novas necessidades. Manutenção de sistemas usando técnicas de evolução arquiteturais tem se mostrado um eficaz caminho para alterar um sistema à nova situação. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar um método para manutenção de sistemas de software usando técnicas arquiteturais de forma a convergir mais rapidamente à adequação da arquitetura destes sistemas. Algumas técnicas do método incluem avaliação de arquitetura de software, levantamento de riscos, provas de conceito construtivas e destrutivas e métricas estáticas e dinâmicas de software. O método proposto foi aplicado em contextos de laboratório e da indústria, permitindo a verificação de pontos fortes e críticos para realizar seu refinamento e tais aplicações são também relatadas neste trabalho. Embora as aplicações do método proposto tenham sido diferentes, tanto no objetivo principal quanto no desenrolar das atividades, seus resultados foram considerados bastante satisfatórios, tanto no contexto de ensino quanto no contexto de indústria. / Several business today are supported by software systems. It is believed that the use of software architecture is fundamental to achieve the business goals and quality. Since the set of requirements that led to the construction of a given architecture may change, such an architecture may become inadequate. In many situations we must live with existing systems, so we must change them to meet the new needs. Systems maintenance using architectural evolution techniques has proven to be an effective path to take a system to the new situation. This works goal is to provide a method for maintenance of software systems using architectural techniques in order to converge more rapidly to match the architecture of these systems. Some techniques used in the method include software architecture evaluation, risks survey, constructive and destructive proofs of concept, static and dynamic software metrics. The proposed method was applied in contexts of laboratory and industry, allowing the verification of strengths and critical points to guide its refinement and such applications are also reported in this work. Although the applications of the proposed method has been different in both the main goal and the conduct of activities, their results were considered very satisfactory, both in the education and the industry context.

Diversos negócios hoje são suportados por sistemas de software. Acredita-se que o uso de Arquitetura de Software é fundamental para atingir alcançar as metas de negócio e qualidade. Visto que o conjunto de requisitos que levou à construção de uma determinada arquitetura pode mudar, tal arquitetura pode tornar-se inadequada. Em diversas situações é preciso conviver com os sistemas existentes, portanto é preciso alterá-los para as novas necessidades. Manutenção de sistemas usando técnicas de evolução arquiteturais tem se mostrado um eficaz caminho para alterar um sistema à nova situação. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar um método para manutenção de sistemas de software usando técnicas arquiteturais de forma a convergir mais rapidamente à adequação da arquitetura destes sistemas. Algumas técnicas do método incluem avaliação de arquitetura de software, levantamento de riscos, provas de conceito construtivas e destrutivas e métricas estáticas e dinâmicas de software. O método proposto foi aplicado em contextos de laboratório e da indústria, permitindo a verificação de pontos fortes e críticos para realizar seu refinamento e tais aplicações são também relatadas neste trabalho. Embora as aplicações do método proposto tenham sido diferentes, tanto no objetivo principal quanto no desenrolar das atividades, seus resultados foram considerados bastante satisfatórios, tanto no contexto de ensino quanto no contexto de indústria. / Several business today are supported by software systems. It is believed that the use of software architecture is fundamental to achieve the business goals and quality. Since the set of requirements that led to the construction of a given architecture may change, such an architecture may become inadequate. In many situations we must live with existing systems, so we must change them to meet the new needs. Systems maintenance using architectural evolution techniques has proven to be an effective path to take a system to the new situation. This works goal is to provide a method for maintenance of software systems using architectural techniques in order to converge more rapidly to match the architecture of these systems. Some techniques used in the method include software architecture evaluation, risks survey, constructive and destructive proofs of concept, static and dynamic software metrics. The proposed method was applied in contexts of laboratory and industry, allowing the verification of strengths and critical points to guide its refinement and such applications are also reported in this work. Although the applications of the proposed method has been different in both the main goal and the conduct of activities, their results were considered very satisfactory, both in the education and the industry context.

Context This thesis verifies a method developed on alignment issues in different data points and is useful to validate the method in those data points. To find the alignment/misalignment problems occurring within the stakeholders in a company is done through surveys using Hierarchical Cumulative Voting (HCV). This paper presents a case study to explain the importance of alignment between the stakeholders to achieve quality. Time, scope and cost are given higher priority leaving quality as it is hard to measure. To maintain quality in a software product is a major challenge in most of the software organizations. Stakeholders play a major role in software development. Without the alignment and common understanding between the stakeholders, it is highly difficult to achieve successful software project with good quality. The reasons for misalignment/alignment between the stakeholders are being explained clearly in this thesis based on the interviews and the survey conducted in software development companies under the novelty of case study. Objectives To evaluate the usefulness of alignment approach in different data points, to achieve product quality, for understanding the reasons for misalignment and to provide common approach for aligning we need to know the actual aligning priorities given by the stakeholders. We have one method for aligning and we want to see how actual alignment is different in different data points. To find the reasons for different stakeholders’ groups focusing on different quality attributes and to manage quality that helps in aligning quality requirements in future. Methods In order to know the importance of quality, prioritization of requirements and about the alignment problem we have conducted the literature review. To understand the problem and to know the reasons for misalignment in the companies we have conducted a case study in which we interviewed 8 employees from a company and to know the individual ranking of quality attributes we also made use of surveys in which 17 individuals from two companies had participated. Results We have identified the reasons for misalignment using interviews in one company and the individual priorities given to different quality attributes through surveys in two different companies. The qualities are prioritized by the stakeholder groups in the surveys and these are used to calculate the alignment/misalignment between the groups using spearman rank correlation which pointed that there are some disagreements between the stakeholder groups. Conclusions This paper explains the results obtained from a case study for determining the alignment/misalignment between different stakeholder groups and the reasons for this situation. Through surveys we found that there is a strong disagreement between the stakeholders in one company and partial agreement in the other company with respect to priorities they assign to individual qualities and the reasons behind this are obtained through interviews. The reasons for misalignment are lack of common understandings between the stakeholders, less discussion on quality requirement, undocumented priorities, no importance given to quality and others. / This Thesis work is about Software Product Quality and how it is achieved through alignment between the people in understanding the requirements. / 0763138272, 0739849383

The master's thesis deals with the quality of software products focusing on usability of these products and methods of its measurement. The thesis resumes the definitions of quality from different sources and quality models according to available standards. It also describes usability in detail and methods and metrics for its measurement and analyses current situation in this field. In the thesis the tool for measuring usability of desktop software products was designed and implemented.

Software security for agile methods, particularly for those designed for individual developers, is still a major concern. With most software products deployed over the Internet, security as a key component of software quality has become a major problem. In addressing this problem, this research proposes a solo software development methodology (SSDM) that uses as minimum resources as possible, at the same time conforming to the best practice for delivering secure and high-quality software products. Agile methods have excelled on delivering timely and quality software. At the same time research also shows that most agile methods do not address the problem of security in the developed software. A metasynthesis of SSDMs conducted in this thesis confirmed the lack practices that promote security in the developed software product. On the other hand, some researchers have demonstrated the feasibility of incorporating existing lightweight security practices into agile methods. This research uses Design Science Research (DSR) to build, demonstrate and evaluate a lightweight SSDM. Using an algorithm adapted for the purpose, the research systematically integrates lightweight security and quality practices to produce an agile secure-solo software development methodology (Secure-SSDM). A multiple-case study in an academic and industry setting is conducted to demonstrate and evaluate the utility of the methodology. This demonstration and evaluation thereof, indicates the applicability of the methodology in building high-quality and secure software products. Theoretical evaluation of the agility of the Secure-SSDM using the four-dimensional analytical tool (4-DAT) shows satisfactory compliance of the methodology with agile principles. The main contributions in this thesis are: the Secure-SSDM, which entails description of the concepts, modelling languages, stages, tasks, tools and techniques; generation of a quality theory on practices that promote quality in a solo software development environment; adaptation of Keramati and Mirian-Hosseinabadi’s algorithm for the purposes of integrating quality and security practices. This research would be of value to researchers as it introduces the security component of software quality into a solo software development environment, probing more research in the area. To software developers the research has provided a lightweight methodology that builds quality and security into the product using minimum resources. / School of Computing / D. Phil. (Computer Science)