Pragmatic quality metrics for evolutionary software development models
Walker Royce · 1990
Due to the large number of product, project and people parameters which impact large custom software development efforts, measurement of software product quality is a complex undertaking. Furthermore, the absolute perspective from which quality is measured (customer satisfaction) is intangible. While we probably can't say what the absolute quality of a software product is, we can determine the relative quality, the adequacy of this quality with respect to pragmatic considerations, and identify good and bad trends during development. While no two software engineers will ever agree on an optimum definition of software quality, they will agree that the most important perspective of software quality is its ease of change. We can call this flexibility, adaptability or some other vague term, but the critical characteristic of software is that it is soft. The easier the product is to modify, the easier it is to achieve any other software quality perspective.