Monitoring the Software Process: A Solution from the Customer Point of View

According to the Italian law, monitoring is a kind of quality control that must be performed during the enactment of contracts related to information systems of the Italian Public Administration. In this paper, the authors describe and analyse the aspects of monitoring as a tool to guarantee the quality of software production and, as a consequence, to assure the customer satisfaction. The paper presents the administrative context where monitoring is applied, its purposes, the application areas, and the relationships with other kinds of quality control. In particular, we emphasise the novelty of monitoring and its characteristic of customer initiative.