Establishing software development process control: Technical objectives, operational requirements, and the foundational framework

To produce and maintain product quality, one must control the development and maintenance processes through the collection, examination, and analysis of both process and product indicators. Process indicators provide measures that reflect the effectiveness of software development and maintenance activities. Product indicators provide measures that indicate the extent to which desirable, quality attributes are present (or absent) in the product (documentation and code). This article proposes a foundational framework for establishing control over the software development process. Critical objectives stressed within this framework include the complementary integration of maintenance and development activities, the identification and definition of a (semi)automated data collection and analysis process which employs quality indicators that are definitively linked to the existence of process and product attributes, and the formulation and use of control methods that are designed to work within the defined automated process and provide decision support capabilities. The significance and necessity of these objectives are established through an examination of the abstraction refinement model, the objectives/principles/attributes framework, and the software quality indicator concept.