Towards the Harmonization of Process and Product Oriented Software Quality Approaches

Software organizations are currently required to implement more than one software process improvement model concurrently. Several multimodel initiatives have appeared to support this situation, and existing proposals address integration from the process perspective, considering models such as CMMI, ISO 90003, ISO/IEC 12207, and ISO/IEC 15504. These efforts attempt to understand how to integrate process focused models in order to optimize resources and obtain the expected benefits. However, as the eventual aim of process improvement is to improve software product quality, it is also important to consider product quality models in harmonization efforts. In this paper, the result of mapping models based on both, (process and product) quality perspectives, is presented. The method used is also briefly described and applied to map ISO/IEC 25010 onto CMMI-DEV and ISO/IEC 12207. The result shows that process oriented improvement models consider product quality characteristics during the early stages of the software development life cycle, and that process improvement initiatives can therefore be driven by product quality improvement goals.