CQML Scheme: A Classification Scheme for Comprehensive Quality Model Landscapes

Managing quality during the development, operation, and maintenance of software(-intensive) systems and services is a challenging task. Although many organizations need to define, control, measure, and improve various quality aspects of their development artifacts and processes, nearly no guidance is available on how to select, adapt, define, combine, use, and evolve quality models. Catalogs of models as well as selection and tailoring processes are widely missing. A first step towards better support for selecting and adapting quality models can be seen in a classification of existing quality models, especially with respect to their suitability for different purposes and contexts. This article presents so-called comprehensive quality model landscapes (CQMLs), which provide such a classification scheme and help to get an overview of existing models and their relationships. The article focuses on the description and justification of essential concepts needed to define quality models and landscapes. In addition, the article describes typical usage scenarios, illustrates the concept with examples, and sketches open questions and future work.