Quality derivation, refinement and generalization in object-oriented software construction

The author defines three quality assurance activities in software validation: quality derivation, quality refinement, and quality generalization. Quality derivation is based on the relationships between quality factors and criteria; quality refinement is based on the stepwise refinement principle involved in the object-oriented approach; and quality generalization is based on the reuse of software components. This set of software validation activities specifies the quality assessment characteristics of quality-driven validation, while its other characteristics are based on the use of design rationale, a coproduct of design which explains why a chosen alternative description is better than others. The other characteristics of quality-driven validation are defined in terms of three activities: specifying the relevant quality characteristics, justifying the choices between alternative descriptions by means of design rationales, and recording the design rationale in connection with design descriptions. The author has experimented with support for the presented quality assessment activities by means of a QDV tool, a supporting tool for quality-driven validation