Tool Support for ISO 14598 based code quality assessments

Abstract

There is empirical evidence, that the internal quality of software has an important impact on the external, i.e., user perceptible software quality. Our Evaluation Method for Internal Software Quality (EMISQ) - based on the ISO 14598 standard for the evaluation of software products - provides the methodological framework for an expert centred assessment of internal software quality, which is supported by metric values and other findings provided by off-the-shelf static code analysis tools. To perform code quality assessments in a timely and efficient manner, it is inevitable to have tool support tailored to the needs of the evaluators. For that purpose we developed the Eclipsed based tool Software Product Quality Reporter (SPQR) that supports the EMISQ method to a large extent - from the formulation of project-specific quality models up to the generation of preliminary code quality reports. The application of SPQR already proved its usefulness in the execution of EMISQ projects.