VK4 - Alignment of Software Quality and Service Quality
Abstract
Software systems are also service systems. More and more, service becomes an integral part of the products. However, language used to describe requirements at business level (quality of service systems) and language used to describe requirements at system-component level (quality of software components) differ a lot. This study will explore if a common ground can be found between quality models developed and used in these two areas.
After discussing different definitions of the word 'service' the author explores the structures of frequently used quality models. Then he tries to align two of them: the IEEE (1992) software quality model with the SERVQUAL (1990) service quality model. The most interesting observation from this comparison is that the languages used in the compared models are quite different, probably depending on different historical backgrounds. One example is that in software quality models there are no analogies to the concept of Courtesy. This might depend on that the social dimension is perceived as much more explicit and important in human-human than in human-computer interaction.
Distinction ought to be made between functional and non-functional quality and between 'what' and 'how' attributes. These distinctions seem to be more common in the software area. But the distinction between core and cue attributes frequently used in business looks new to software quality.
The main conclusions are that the correspondence between widespread models of service quality and software quality is incomplete, and that both service management and software engineering would benefit from widening their perspective.