(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 7, 2019 223 | Page www.ijacsa.thesai.org Metric-based Measurement and Selection for Software Product Quality Assessment: Qualitative Expert Interviews Zubaidah Bukhari 1 , Jamaiah Yahaya 2 Faculty of Information Science and Technology Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia Aziz Deraman 3 School of Informatics and Applied Mathematics Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia Abstract—A systematic and efficient measurement process can assist towards the production of quality software product. Metric-based measurement method often used to assess the product quality. Currently several hundreds of metrics have been proposed by previous researchers. However, there is no specific and structured mechanism for metrics selection process. Lack of awareness, knowledge and experience lead to selecting inappropriate and unsuitable metrics for assessment of software product quality done by the practitioners and stakeholders in the industry. Literature study found that the existing selection models are irrelevant and insufficient for assisting and supporting metrics selection process in which it should consists of criteria, and systematic and practical methods of selection process. A qualitative interview was conducted involving 12 experts and practitioners to reveal current issues in software measurement, to identify elements relevant for software metric selection process and to identify the appropriate and valid software metric selection criteria. Finding from this expert interview revealed important input from industry which are: Five main issues in software measurement, six elements associated with metric selection process and 13 criteria relevant for software metric selection. Keywords—Software product metric; metric selection criteria; software quality; software measurement; selection process; qualitative study I. INTRODUCTION Systematic measurement is an important procedure to ensure and maintain the quality attributes of product deliverables to customers or users. Making the measurement process works in organisation requires collecting correct and relevant metrics based on organisation’s objectives and goal. In order to obtain metrics and measurements that address the needs of organizations, the measurement process must be structured, systematic and guided. Software measurement based on quality model and software metric has been introduced and investigated by previous researchers such as Fernando Pinciroli, Yahaya & Aziz, Bouwers, Deursen & Visser, and Ahmad Fadzlah & Deraman [1][2][3][4]. Current and available quality models developed by previous researchers offered general and imprecise criteria for software quality assessment [2][5][6][7]. Software metrics is a measure of software characteristics, which are measurable or countable. Software metrics is “an objective, mathematical measure of software that is sensitive to differences in software characteristics. It provides a quantitative measure of an attribute which the body of software exhibits” [8]. There are many studies that proposed different types of metrics such as security metrics [9], usability metrics [4], and web application metrics [10][11]. Software metrics will affect the measurement program and eliminating inaccurate metrics will improve software performance and reduce wastage[10]. However, there is no consensus on which metrics are relevant and worth for selection [2][5][12][13]. A number of previous researches [14][15][16] stated use of standards as a success factor in metric selection (e.g. ISO/IEC 15939 [17], ISO/IEC 9126[18], ISO/IEC 25000 [19] and ISO/IEC 14598 [20]). However, there is still no consensus in the software measurement area on which standard(s) to use. Most standards present only quality metrics or basic project management metrics such as size (Function Points, cyclomatic complexity etc.). Studies have revealed that after the second year of implementing measurement metrics, 50%-80% of these measurements are not maintained [14][15]. It is also found that a very high failure rate in metric implementation which is 66.7%. Even though software metric has been introduced by previous researchers, managing and maintaining the assessment program is a challenge and mostly because of lack of commitment from staff [16], no guideline for implementation [17], lack of experts [15] and also there is no metric repository for effective and efficient metric selection to the practitioners and stakeholders [2][5][12]. This paper presents the qualitative expert interviews and findings on software product quality assessment based on metric-based measurement from industrial perspectives. It starts the discussion with background and related work in Section 2, and continues with the qualitative interview in Section 3. Section 4 discusses the analysis and findings, and Section 5 presents the result and discussion. This paper concludes with a conclusion in Section 6. II. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORKS This section discusses the current issues, challenges, concepts and related works regarding metric-based measurement and selections. A. Software Quality Models Literature study has revealed several quality models available to measure and assess software product quality such models are: McCall [21], Boehm [22], FURPS [23], ISO 9126 [18], ISO 25010 [19], Pragmatic Quality Factor or PQF [24]. Current user’s requirements and expectation demand for This research is funded partly by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, The Research University Grant (AP-2017-005/3).