An Adaptable Software Product Evaluation Metric

Software product evaluation is a tool to choose among alternative software products for an intended application, but can also assist the developers of the software in judging the relevance of their product and in identifying missing functionalities. The suitability of software products is dependent on the intended application scenario and environment, which is why quantitative, objective metrics for product evaluation are difficult to find. This paper presents an adaptable method of quantifying product characteristics, and includes an application of the method in tool selection, for knowledge discovery (data mining) tools. The method can be made objective by providing precise evaluation plans or scenarios. It is adaptable by the evaluator to reflect different levels of detail, and/or different prioritisations of criteria, in different evaluation scenarios. Two possible levels of details are illustrated based on the example evaluation.