Guest lecture given by Ibrahim Akman, a visitor from Atilim University (Turkey).

Title: Assessing Software Quality Using Markov Decision Processes

Abstract:

The quality of software is one of the most critical concerns in software system development, and many products fail to meet the quality objectives when constructed initially. The software quality is highly affected by the development process  actual dynamics. The identification and consequences of such software quality are usually not possible for the purpose of quality assessment. This article proposes the use of the Markov Decision Process (MDP) for the assessment of software quality since MDP is a useful technique to abstact the model of dynamics of the development process and to test their impact on quality. Additionally, the MDP modelling of the dynamics leads to early prediction of the quality - from the design phases all the way through the different stages of the development. The proposed approach is based on the stochastic nature of the software development process, including project architecture, construction strategy of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) system, its qualification actions, and team assignment strategy. It accepts these factors as inputs, generating a relative quality degree  as an output. The proposed approach has been demonstrated for the design phase with a case study taken from the literature. The results prove its robustness and capability in identifying appropriate policies in terms of quality, cost and time.