Quality Assurance Tradeoff Analysis Method (QATAM) An Empirical Quality Assurance Planning and Evaluation Framework

The selection and design of quality assurance (QA) methods for software development projects a) involves tradeoffs that are not always made explicit and b) the impacts of the selection decisions on project success and risks may be not well understood. Similar to SEI’s ATAM analysis technique for software architecture quality and risk evaluation, this paper introduces the ideas for QATAM, a technique for the evaluation of QA strategies and their tradeoffs in the context of a software process. In a framework process to define and evaluate software engineering and QA strategies, QATAM draws on approaches to elicit stakeholder value propositions and risks, to operationalize the most important value propositions (quality requirements) in scenarios, and to rate the potential of QA approaches to identify and mitigate relevant project risks. We illustrate the application of QATAM in an ongoing research project LifeCycleQM, which aims at improving evidence-based application of QA activities in SMEs.