Example Quality Grids

Developer-Oriented Quality Grid

The following is an example quality grid documenting the developer-oriented quality factors for an Internet auction and sales marketplace:

 
Developer-Oriented
Quality Factors		 Critical Very
Important		 Important Not Very
Important		 Irrelevant or
Unimportant
Installability
X (1)
    
X (2)
  
Maintainability:  
X
      
•   Correctability    
X
    
•   Extensibility  
X
      
Portability    
X
    
Reusability      
X
  
Scalability
X
        
Testability    
X
    

  1. It is critical that any client components must be easy to install because untrained customers will be installing them on their personal machines (e.g., personal computers, personal digital assistants, etc.).
  2. Installation of any server components is less important because it will be done by trained engineers.

User-Oriented Quality Grid

The following is an example quality grid documenting the user-oriented quality factors for an auction application:

User-Oriented
Quality Factors		 Critical Very
Important		 Important Not Very
Important		 Irrelevant or
Unimportant
Accessibility    
X (1)
    
Auditability  
X (2)
      
Configurability:    
X
    
•   Variant Capabilities        
X (3)
•   Internationalization  
X (4)
      
•   Personalization
X (5)
        
Correctness:
X
        
•   Latent Defects
X
        
•   Accuracy
X (6)
        
•   Precision      
X (7)
  
•   Timeliness  
X
      
Efficiency    
X
    
Interoperability  
X (8)
      
Operational Availability
X (9)
        
Performance:  
X
      
•   Capacity
X (10)
        
•   Latency  
X
      
•   Response Time
X (11)
        
•   Throughput  
X (12)
      
Reliability  
X
      
Robustness  
X (13)
      
Safety      
X (14)
  
Security:  
X
      
•   Identification    
X (15)
    
•   Authentication
X (16)
        
•   Authorization
X (17)
        
•   Immunity  
X (18)
      
•   Integrity  
X (19)
      
•   Intrusion Detection  
X
      
•   Nonrepudiation    
X (20)
    
•   Privacy
X (21)
        
•   Security Auditing    
X
    
•   System Maintenance
Security		      
X
  
Usability
X (22)
        

  1. Accessibility is important, but not critical, because most of the users of the application will not have significant disabilities. Only the most common disabilities (e.g., color blindness) are very important.
  2. Auditability is very important due to the large numbers of financial transactions and the need to deal with organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
  3. No separate variants of the application are planned.
  4. Internationalization is very important because the number of foreign users is projected to greatly increase over time.
  5. User analysis and market analysis have shown that personalization are considered to be critical to users and the marketing organization.
  6. Accuracy is only critical with regard to monetary amounts.
  7. Precision will only become very important when micropayments are included for certain sales.
  8. Browser and operating system interoperability are very important.
  9. Operational availability is critical because downtime directly results in both loss of revenue as well as user confidence and loyalty.
  10. Capacity is critical because of the large number of users and transactions involved.
  11. Response time is critical to users. Fortunately, we are only talking about soft-realtime requirements involving human wait times because we have no control over Internet communication times and user connection speeds.
  12. Throughput is very important because of the high capacities projected.
  13. Robustness is very important because untrained users can easily try to enter inappropriate data.
  14. Safety is very important only because of potential financial losses (i.e., loss of, or damage to, property rather than loss of, or injury to, life).
  15. Identification is somewhat important only in so far as it is a prerequisite for authentication and authorization.
  16. Authentication is critical because of the financial aspects of the application.
  17. Authorization is critical because of the financial aspects of the application.
  18. Immunity is very important because of the threat of crackers attaching viruses to their communications and content.
  19. Integrity is very important because of the threat of crackers modifying communication and content including financial information.
  20. Nonrepudiation is important because of potential disagreements between buyers and sellers.
  21. Privacy is critical because of the sensitive nature of some of the information that is communicated and stored by the application (e.g., credit card information or information that can be used to perform identity theft.
  22. Usability is critical because of the wide range of untrained users that will use the application.