The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has recently announced a partnership with the Object Management Group (OMG) to sponsor the Consortium of IT Software Quality (CISQ). This consortium is an industry-led initiative that addresses the measurement of critical IT application quality attributes.
“For several years, IT executives have complained that there are no industry standards for measuring the quality of business application software,” said Dr. Richard Soley, the CEO of OMG. “CISQ will enable us to benchmark the effectiveness of internal development, evaluate the quality of applications acquired from external sources, and predict the quality and cost of IT services to the business.”
On top of setting quality measurement standards that IT organizations can follow, the consortium also aims to automate application quality measurement. Within this framework, a not-for-profit computer industry consortium formulated the following five objectives for implementing the program:
- advocacy on the importance of IT application quality to business and government leaders;
- development of standard measures of quality attributes for evaluating software quality;
- proposal of methods for the use of quality measures in the acquisition or maintenance of IT applications;
- development of professional licensing for application testing service providers;
- establishment of an online IT industry forum that addresses IT application quality issues.
To achieve these objectives, the consortium plans to work with IT industry executives, system integrators, and service providers. Of particular interest to the consortium is the promotion of a market-based system that would support the deployment of standardized quality measurements.
