OFFSHORE ENERGY DATA SYSTEMS LTD

Offshore Energy Data Systems Ltd

Offshore Energy Data Systems Ltd

Summary

Evaluation of Information Technology is considered as decision making on Information Technology investments. To take the decision to invest is one thing, but actual implementation is another thing. Because of the increasing size, complexity, quality needs and market demands for software, problems arise that are specific for software development. Examples of such problems are planning difficulties, exceeding budgets, unknown or bad product quality, projects that are stopped or never ended, milestones that are reached months or years too late, or developers who are working mostly unstructured, under high stress. Those problems should be addressed by increasing management effort to control implementation.

Table of Contents

Relevant Professional Issues3

Research Aims and Objectives3

Research Methods3

Program of work3

Evaluation modules3

Specifying Quality Requirements - Quality Profile3

Building A Quality Profile3

Selecting Appropriate Actions To Improve Software Implementation3

Designing And Executing Evaluation Activities3

Conclusions3

References3

Relevant Professional Issues

Software Product Evaluation can be regarded as an instrument which will support such control. It is defined as the assessment of software product characteristics according to specified procedures (definition is based upon ISO14598, 1996). During a Software Product Evaluation the fit between the software product and the needs of that product are determined. This fit concerns both explicit and implicit needs about the product, often referred to as software product quality. By on the one hand examining the needed level of product quality, and on the other hand examining whether a product meets that level of quality, fitness for use is evaluated. This can be done during several phases of development and use, which results in increased control during the transformation from investment decision to actual implementation.

The relation between Evaluation of Information Technology and Software Product Evaluation is visualised in Figure. The left side depicts the development of investment proposals during Evaluation of Information Technology. The decision process is not refined and assumed to be a certain process that comes up with a 'best' proposal. On the right side, Software Product Evaluation is depicted as a process during implementation1. The result of evaluation is software product quality at different moments. There is a relation between the investment proposal and the actual software product quality. The initial investment proposal is translated into software product quality from the start of implementation. During implementation several versions of the product can be compared to the intended software product quality of the investment proposal.

Software Product Evaluation becomes a growing market within the software industry. Customers and users get the opportunity to have a potential product evaluated to their needs and start demanding such evaluations more and more. 'Evaluation strategies' means broad, overarching perspectives on evaluation. They encompass the most general groups or "camps" of evaluators; although, at its best, evaluation work borrows eclectically from the perspectives of all these camps. Four major groups of evaluation strategies are discussed here.

Scientific-experimental models are probably the most historically dominant evaluation strategies. Taking their values and methods from the sciences -- especially the social sciences -- they prioritize on the desirability of impartiality, accuracy, objectivity and ...