Using the Multi-Attribute Global Inference of Quality (MAGIQ) Technique for Software Testing

The Multi-Attribute Global Inference of Quality (MAGIQ) technique is a simple way to assign a single measure of overall quality to each of a set of similar software systems. Software testing activities can produce a wide range of useful information such as bug counts, performance metrics, and mean time to failure data. However, techniques to aggregate quality and testing metrics into a single quality meta-value are not widely known or used. The MAGIQ technique uses rank order centroids to convert system comparison attributes into normalized numeric weights, and then computes an overall measure of quality as a weighted (by comparison attributes) sum of system ratings. MAGIQ was originally developed to validate the results of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analyses. Although MAGIQ has not been subjected to extensive research, the technique has proven highly useful in practice.