Quality metrics for intranet applications

As the number of intranet application increases, software developers face a new software paradigm and possibly a new set of quality requirement. The work discussed here attempts to identify practical software metrics for intranet applications. The six software quality characteristics and 32 quality sub-characteristics of the Extended ISO model are used as a basis to identify the key quality characteristics of intranet applications. From the results of a user survey, three key quality characteristics are identified; they are reliability, functionality, and efficiency. Five sub-characteristics (availability, accuracy, security, suitability and time behaviour) are found to be the key attributes of intranet applications. Finally, a set of three metrics is developed. In order to verify their validity and applicability to intranet projects, an experiment was performed by computing these metrics in five intranet applications. The metric values were then compared with the results from a user satisfaction survey. The metric values and the survey results were closely correlated; a larger score in software metrics leads to a higher user satisfaction score. It is very likely that these software metrics can effectively reflect the quality of an intranet application. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.