On the Use of Software Quality Standard ISO/IEC9126 in Mobile Environments

The capabilities and resources offered by mobile technologies are still far from those provided by fixed environments, and this poses serious challenges, in terms of evaluating the quality of applications operating in mobile environments. This article presents a study to help quality managers apply the ISO 9126 standard on software quality, particularly the External Quality model, to mobile environments. The influence of the limitations of mobile technologies are evaluated for each software quality characteristic, based on the coverage rates of its external metrics, which are themselves influenced by these limitations. The degrees of this influence are discussed and aggregated to provide useful recommendations to quality managers for their evaluation of quality characteristics in mobile environments. These recommendations are intended for mobile software in general and aren´t targeted a specific ones. The External Quality model is especially valuable for assessing the Reliability, Usability, and Efficiency characteristics, and illustrates very well the conclusive nature of the recommendations of this study. However, more study is needed on the other quality characteristics, in order to determine the relevance of evaluating them in mobile environments.