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Model-driven gap analysis for the fulfillment of quality standards in software development processes

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Abstract

Society today is moving towards rapid digitalization of almost every aspect of our lives. From healthcare and transport to work or entertainment, we depend on software products that need to function properly. The adequate construction of these software products can be evaluated and certified by means of quality standards. However, adopting quality standards is a complex and time-consuming task that requires experienced practitioners with advanced knowledge about standards and development practices. This presents a dichotomy for development companies that are transitioning to more agile schemes, where the necessary quality knowledge is scarce and poorly documented, and is slowly learnt and applied by novel practitioners. To overcome these issues, this paper presents a model-driven approach to automate the analysis of software development processes that must be aligned to quality standards. The approach has been implemented in an open-source tool and applied to a case study to automatically generate a gap analysis by reusing expert knowledge related to the ISO 9001 standard. The application has demonstrated it is possible to reduce the effort required from expert practitioners to perform the analysis and improve development processes to ensure the fulfillment of specific quality standards.

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Data availability

The model diagrams related to the proposal application have been deposited in Zenodo repository with the reference code 7378525.

Notes

  1. Eclipse Modeling Tools. Retrieved from https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/release/202212/r/eclipse-modeling-tools.

  2. The CMMi-DEV model defined can be downloaded from https://zenodo.org/deposit/7378525.

  3. The ISO 9001 model defined can be downloaded from https://zenodo.org/deposit/7378525. The original model is in Spanish.

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Funding

The work leading to this paper received funding from the VALU3S (H2020-ECSEL grant agreement no 876852; Music360 Project (Horizon Europe research and innovation programme) grant agreement No 101094872; MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 ref. PCI2020-112001; European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR), REBECCA (HORIZON-KDT agreement no 101097224; MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 ref. PCI2022-135043–2; European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR), iRel4.0 (H2020-ECSEL grant agreement no 876659; MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 ref. PCI2020-112240; European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR), ETHEREAL (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 ref. PID2020-115220RB-C21; ERDF A way of making Europe), and Treasure (JCCM ref. SBPLY/19/180501/ 000270; EC’s ERDF A way of making Europe) projects; the Ramon y Cajal Program (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 ref. RYC-2017–22836; ESF Investing in your future); The Valencian Innovation Agency and Innovation through the OGMIOS project (INNEST/2021/57); The Generalitat Valenciana through the CoMoDiD project (CIPROM/2021/023); The Spanish State Research Agency through the DELFOS (PDC2021-121243-I00) and SREC (PID2021-123824OB-I00) projects; MICIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033; and co-financed with ERDF and the European Union Next Generation EU/PRTR; and SIAM (Chile’s CORFO-INNOVA ref. 16COTE-60218), and NISUM Technologies in Chile.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile

    Giovanni Giachetti

  2. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain

    José Luis de la Vara

  3. Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    Giovanni Giachetti & Beatriz Marín

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  1. Giovanni Giachetti
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  2. José Luis de la Vara
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Contributions

Giovanni Giachetti conceived the proposal and wrote the main manuscript text. José Luis de la Vara performed the conceptual validation of the model-driven approach. Beatriz Marín supported the empirical validation of the approach. Giovanni Giachetti, José Luis de la Vara, and Beatriz Marín prepared and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Giovanni Giachetti.

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Giachetti, G., de la Vara, J.L. & Marín, B. Model-driven gap analysis for the fulfillment of quality standards in software development processes. Software Qual J 32, 255–282 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-023-09649-x

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