Integrating Quality Criteria and Methods of Evaluation for Software Models

Successful realization of the model-driven software development visions in practice requires high quality models. This chapter focuses on the quality of models themselves. It discusses context-free and context-dependent quality criteria for models and then moves on to methods of evaluation which facilitate checking whether a model is good enough. We use linguistic theories to understand groups of criteria and their impact on other models, software product and the process of software development. We propose a strict distinction of the impacts of visual modeling languages, models of the system and tools for quality criteria. This distinction is helpful when designing the methods of evaluation and making decision about the point in time, scope and personnel responsible for quality assessment. As the quality criteria and several methods of evaluation has usually been considered separately we propose a methodology which integrates them. Such an integrated approach provides the following benefits. It allows for designing methods of evaluation based on quality criteria and elements of the model (or modeling language) in the context of specific needs. It can be applied for management of the scope of evaluation with quality criteria as well as configuration of the method to a specific situation. It allows for flexible and efficient conduct of the evaluation with selection of the methods of evaluation. Finally, this chapter presents case studies which illustrate the approach.