Towards a Model-Centric Quality Assessment

This paper introduces MoCQA, a Model-Centric Quality Assessment framework re-lying on a quality metamodel and supporting a flexible integration of different types of quantitative quality assessment all along the software development lifecycle. This framework provides a top-down two-level methodology. The first level (conceptual) focuses on the generation of a customised assessment quality model (CAQM) for the software project. The underlying quality metamodel ensures the robustness and coherence of the model generation and its evolution. The second level (operational) implements a concrete measurement plan using the generated CAQM for a system-atic and/or semi-automated exploitation of the measurement values. It also allows different backtracking between those steps to support the CAQM "lifecycle", which is one of the strengths of the framework. So far, early applications highlight the positive impact of the opportunity given by MoCQA to refine and let evolve the CAQM as well as the flexibility allowed by the quality metamodel.