Design of SOA Based Web Service Systems Using QFD for Satisfaction of Quality of Service Requirements

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a loosely-coupled architecture designed to meet business needs of an organization. It is becoming a trend for system development and integration where systems group functionality around business processes. Although SOA does not require Web services, Web services are based on accepted standards and drive SOA to the mainstream. There are at least two challenges with quality management of SOA based Web service systems. One of them is how to link explicitly its technical capabilities with customerspsila needs to satisfy customerspsila functional and nonfunctional requirements. The second is how to determine targets of Web service technical attributes. The first issue is not addressed at all and the second issue is dealt with subjectively in the current practice of development of SOA based Web service systems. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a major quality management system used to determine product development characteristics from customer requirements. It has found its success in improving quality of complex products, such as automobiles, aircrafts, and consumer electronics, although it has not been used in the development of SOA based Web service systems. In this paper, we analyze a number of quality of Web service requirements and their related technical attributes, and apply the QFD for developing SOA based Web service systems by linking quality of service requirements to Web service design attributes. An impact based linear regression method is used to determine technical targets of design features of SOA based Web service systems for the satisfaction of quality of service requirements.