Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology Software Quality Management Supported by Software Agent Technology

Software technology and computing resources have evolved and developed considerably over the past years and may be considered as the backbone of many business ventures today. However, the software project management environment has also changed and is continuously evolving. Currently software projects are developed and deployed in distributed, pervasive and collaborative environments. This means that traditional software project management methods cannot, and do not, address the added complexities found in a pervasive, distributed global environment. Projects thus have a high rate of failure. More specifically, software projects often do not comply with the traditional standard measurements of success, namely time, cost and specifications. There is thus a need for new methods and measures to support software project management. In this paper, software agent technology is explored as a potential tool for enhancing software project management practices in general. We propose and discuss a software agent framework, specifically to support software quality management. Although still in its initial phases, research indicates some promise in enabling software developers to meet market expectations and produce projects timeously, within budget and to users’ satisfaction.