Tool Support for Continuous Quality Control

TL;DR

This paper discusses tools and a flexible open-source toolkit designed to automate and visualize continuous quality assessments in software systems, helping prevent quality decay and support decision-making.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible, open-source toolkit for creating dashboards that facilitate automated, aggregated, and continuous software quality control.

Findings

Supports early detection of quality issues

Enhances decision-making with integrated views

Reduces quality decay over time

Abstract

Over time, software systems suffer gradual quality decay and therefore costs can rise if organizations fail to take proactive countermeasures. Quality control is the first step to avoiding this cost trap. Continuous quality assessments help users identify quality problems early, when their removal is still inexpensive; they also aid decision making by providing an integrated view of a software system's current status. As a side effect, continuous and timely feedback helps developers and maintenance personnel improve their skills and thereby decreases the likelihood of future quality defects. To make regular quality control feasible, it must be highly automated, and assessment results must be presented in an aggregated manner to avoid overwhelming users with data. This article offers an overview of tools that aim to address these issues. The authors also discuss their own flexible, open-source toolkit, which supports the creation of dashboards for quality control.