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#REDIRECT [[Software quality#Measurement]] {{R to section}}
'''Software quality''' can be defined as 'conformance to requirements' and/or 'fitness of use'. Quality achievements start with a clear definition of what "quality of source code" means to the organization or project. In simple terms all the [[stakeholder]]s must be well informed of what is expected, what the [[goal]]s to be achieved are, what the evaluation criteria will be and how they can contribute to achieve the goal.
==Procedure==
The first step in this direction is to decide the goals and their definitions, for example the following are some of the common goals of any [[software]] development / maintenance project.
* [[Software testability|Testability]]: Ease of testing.
* Maintainability: The ease of change.
This solves the first level of ambiguity, but the job of defining software quality has just begun. The very next step is to determine what predicates a quality goal. There can be several factors which can influence a particular goal positively or negatively, these factors can be [[predicate]]s of a goal and these predicates can be as simple as a naming convention to be followed or as complex as a desired "useful" comments percentage per class. In general these predicates are nothing but the "[best practices]]" to be followed and standard "[[software metrics]]" which are collected to determine different quality aspects of the software solution.
===Goal oriented measurement===
The software metric "[[cyclomatic complexity]]" has considerable influence on the [[software testability|testability]] of a function, module and eventually the software as a whole. In simple terms cyclomatic complexity increases as the number of [[conditional construct]]s in a [[Function (computer science)|function]] increases, which actually mean that more testing effort is needed. So, cyclomatic complexity is a predicate for the goal "testability", and as CC increases, testability becomes tougher (decreases).
===Predicate contribution===
There can be many factors which can influence the quality goal "Testability". Simply, by setting weights it is possible to control which predicates contribute more to the goal of concern.
==See also==
{{Portal|Java}}
* [[Software Quality Assurance]]
* [[Squale (Software Quality)]] A open-source project that offers advanced quality models
==External links==
{{nofootnotes|date=February 2011}}
*[http://www.sqa.net/softwarequalityattributes.html Software Quality Attribute Models]
*[http://www.sqa.net/iso9126.html ISO 9126 Software Quality Characteristics]
*[http://www.spago4q.org Spago4Q Web Site]
[[Category:Software metrics]]
[[Category:Java development tools]]
[[Category:Software quality]]
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