Abstract
In domains such as aerospace, automotive, and medical devices, high-quality software is key due to the critical nature of these applications and the low margin for failure. Ensuring the quality of software is essential to prevent potentially catastrophic outcomes. In this paper, we present an approach to derive quality assurance plans from well-defined process models. Utilizing the GQM model, we derive quality requirements and metrics based on a process example, which we realize in the process management tool Stages. Based on the exemplary realization, we simulate 100 projects to provide data used in a recommendation system that enriches the process model such that quality assurance plans including the metrics of interest can be generated from the process model. Our findings show that, given sufficient data is available, context-specific quality assurance plans can be generated and which particular steps have to be taken to realize the overall concept in the studied tool.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that, due to the exploratory nature of this research, we intentionally selected a fairly simple process to get data of manageable volume, i.e., a proof-of-concept. A discussion of implementing cases of relevant size and complexity in industry settings is discussed in the future work in Sect. 5.
- 2.
To allow for easy inspection and validation, the proof-of-concept only considers the highest-rated metric. The final solution concept, however, shall provide a ranked list of metrics, so that the users can make a decision which metric to use.
- 3.
Note that due to confidentiality of actual customers’ project performance data, we used synthetic data in a simulation-based approach. In the actually deployed tool, the required data can be made available, even though an explicit evaluation of the appropriateness of the used measurement per activity is subject to a tool update.
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Acknowledgment
As part of the project ANuKI, this work is partly funded the German Aerospace Center under Grant No.: 50RM2100A.
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Guzman, J.C., Dörr, H., Gruber, C., Münch, J., Kuhrmann, M. (2025). On the Derivation of Quality Assurance Plans from Process Model Descriptions. In: Pfahl, D., Gonzalez Huerta, J., Klünder, J., Anwar, H. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. Industry-, Workshop-, and Doctoral Symposium Papers. PROFES 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15453. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78392-0_8
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