Prioritizing checklists for the decision support of quality evaluation based on external multiple characteristics of software

Since observing every aspect of external software behavior is almost impossible, it is crucial to designate an adequate range for quality evaluation such as an adequate number of quality checklists or product quality metrics. In this paper, a repository accumulating the quality checklists and metrics having dependency relationships with external characteristics of software is suggested. The repository is created and maintained with the prior sample data of software defects or evaluation records. In the repository, multiple external characteristics of software are mapped as nodes to affect and determine the priority ranks of quality checklists. The advantage of the repository is the easy extension of inference mechanism. When the feedback is sent back from the quality certifier and stakeholders, the inference mechanism is extended to reflect the new sample data without separate training upon its own structure of nodes network.