Quality models, extensible frameworks and tools to automatically assess and evaluate the quality of software documentation.
Motivation
The quality of a software product is a significant driver for its success. However, the majority of the applied quality assurance methods mainly focus on the executable source code. Quality reviews of the software documentation are often omitted. Nonetheless, software documents such as requirements specifications, design documents, or test plans represent essential parts of a software product. Therefore, the quality of such documents influences the overall quality of a software product considerably.
Goals
- An operational quality model for capturing the quality of software documentating
- Identification of indicators for measuring the quality of software documentation
- An extensible toolset for measuring documentation quality
Results
- Specification of a high number of measures (~80) for measuring the quality of software documentation
- A framework and tool for measuring documentation quality. The current implementation of the DQDD (Documentation Quality Defect Detection) tool supports ~55 of the identified measures.
Duration
2011 – 2014
Partners Siemens Corporate Technology
Contact Reinhold Plösch
Software Documentation Quality
Publications
R. Plösch, A. Dautovic, M. Saft: The Value of Software Documentation Quality, 14th International Conference on Quality Software, Dallas, USA, October 2-3, 2014, IEEE Computer Society Press 2014, doi:10.1109/QSIC.2014.22
Conference Article
Andreas Dautovic: Automatic Measurement of Software Documentation Quality, Doctoral thesis, Department of Business Informatics - Software Engineering, Johannes Kepler University Linz, September 2012.
PhD Thesis
A. Dautovic: Automatic Assessment of Software Documentation Quality, Proceedings of 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference On Automated Software Engineering (ASE), Lawrence, KS, USA, November 6-12, 2011, doi:10.1109/ASE.2011.6100151
Conference Article
A. Dautovic, R. Plösch, M. Saft: Automatic Checking of Quality Best Practices in Software Development Documents, Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Quality Software, QSIC, Spain, July 13-14, 2011, IEEE Computer Society, doi:10.1109/QSIC.2011.23
Conference Article
A. Dautovic, R. Plösch, M. Saft: Automated Quality Defect Detection in Software Development Documents, Proceedings of Fifth International Workshop on Software Quality and Maintainability, Carl Von Ossietzky Universität in Oldenburg, Germany, March 1st 2011.
Workshop Article