Software Engineering 2018; 6(4): 110-115 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/se doi: 10.11648/j.se.20180604.11 ISSN: 2376-8029 (Print); ISSN: 2376-8037 (Online) FQWCOS: A Flexible Model for Measuring Customer Satisfaction on Software Based Products and Service Ezekiel Uzor Okike Department of Computer Science, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana Email address: To cite this article: Ezekiel Uzor Okike. FQWCOS: A Flexible Model for Measuring Customer Satisfaction on Software Based Products and Service. Software Engineering. Vol. 6, No. 4, 2018, pp. 110-115. doi: 10.11648/j.se.20180604.11 Received: November 10, 2018; Accepted: December 11, 2018; Published: December 110, 2018 Abstract: Many software products and services deployed in user environments at times fail to meet user needs satisfactorily. This may be due to the fact that the product or service failed to meet user requirements from the outset (inception) of the Information Systems (IS) project. This study proposes a Flexible Qualifier Weighted Customer Opinion with Safeguard Estimates (FQWCOS) model for measuring the satisfaction of users of software products and services. The FQWCOS model is a variant of the Qualifications Weighted Customer Opinion with Safeguard questions (QWCOS). The FQWCOS model was verified with empirical data using samples from 40 users of ASAS software product. Descriptive statistics were also used to obtain the frequencies, mean values, relative frequencies, standard error, and standard deviation. From these values, it was possible to compute the normalized score of customer opinion Oi and the external measures E for QWCOS and Ei (i=1-4) for FQWCOS were computed. Results from the study reveal that there was no difference between the external measures for QWCOS and FQWCOS. However, the result suggest that external measures were higher when standard error (SE) was used to obtain the measures at different levels 31.58, 19.79, 21.76, 35.69 and 31.06 than when external measure was computed using standard deviation (STD) which yielded the values 4.99, 3.13, 3.44, 5.64 and 4.07. We conclude that FQWCOS and QWCOS yield the same values probably due to small sample used. However, FQWCOS provides a flexible and simple approach, and reveals the need to use the standard error instead of standard deviation since this yields higher magnitude values appropriate for expressing external measures in percentages. Keywords: Software Quality, External Measurement, Customer Satisfaction, Flexible Model 1. Introduction Software metrics presently preferred to be called software measurement is concerned with measurements in Software Engineering. Software Engineering (SE) is concerned with all the activities in software production from specification to maintenance, including issues of project management, use of tools, methods and theories as applicable [27]. The preference of the term “Software measurement” to the term “Software metric” is due that the fact that the term “measure” supposedly emphasizes that the collection of measurements preserve relationships that exist between the entities being measured. This is the approach of the science of measurement otherwise called measurement theory [8, 13]. Software applications today are becoming more complex, and organizations cannot afford to neglect the likely consequences of the failure of their Information Systems (IS). Among these consequences are economic losses, and even threats to human lives. Therefore, a means of effectively measuring the quality and reliability of software products is needed. On the other hand, effective use of measurement instruments in software products and services benefit an organization in many ways [5]: 1. Estimating the cost and schedule of future projects 2. Evaluating the productivity impacts of new tools and techniques 3. Establishing productivity trends over time 4. Improving software quality 5. Forecasting future staffing needs 6. Anticipating and reducing future maintenance requirements 7. Setting design standards for an organization