Factors Modulating Software Design Quality

TL;DR

This paper explores factors influencing software design quality in object-oriented development, emphasizing the importance of layered architecture and design metrics to enhance final product quality.

Contribution

It introduces a layered architecture model and discusses design metrics as novel tools for improving and measuring software design quality.

Findings

Layered architecture significantly impacts design quality.

Design metrics correlate with improved software quality.

Factors like complexity and interaction influence overall quality.

Abstract

Object oriented approach is one of the popular software development approach for managing complex systems with massive set of requirements. Unlike procedural approach, this approach captures the requirements as set of data rather than services. Further, class is considered as a key unit of the solution-domain with data and services wrapped together, representing architectural design of a basic module. Thus, system complexity is directly related to the number of modules and the degree of interaction between them. This could be mapped as a functional diagram with cardinalities between the modules. However, complexity is always a threat to quality at each stage of software development. Design phase is therefore one of the core influencing phases during development that selects the right architecture based on the problem statement which is bound to be measured for quality. Hence, software industries adapts several organization- specific principles, domain-specific patterns, metric standards and best practices to improve and measure the quality of both process and product. The paper highlights the factors which influence the overall design quality and metrics implication in improving the quality of final product. It also presents the solution domain as an interdependent layered architecture which has a greater impact on concluding the quality of the end product. This approach of design is a unique contribution to the domain of Object Oriented approach of software development. It also focuses on design metrics which ensures the implementation of right choice of design towards the retention of quality of the product.