Standards support for software tool quality assessment

Recent years have seen significant activity in the development of standards for software quality and its assessment, and for the evaluation and selection and adoption of CASE technology. Initial use of these standards has been encouraging, but additional areas for further effort have been identified. This paper discusses the recent use of ISO/IEC 9126:1991 Information Technology-Software quality characteristics and their use, and ANSI/IEEE 1209-1992, Recommended Practice for the Evaluation and Selection of CASE Tools in two cases which indicate that these standards provide excellent frameworks within which to assess tool quality. Problems which arose during these evaluations due, at least in part, to the generality of the standards are identified. The paper ends with a discussion of the status of on-going standards efforts and how those efforts, if successfully concluded, can improve future evaluation tasks