The introduction of fast and cheap computer and networking hardware enables the spread of software. Software, in a nutshell, represents an unprecedented ability to channel creativity and innovation. The joyful act of simply writing computer programs for existing ICT infrastructure can change the world. We are currently witnessing how our lives can change rapidly as a result, at every level of organization and society and in practically every aspect of the human condition: work, play, love and war.

In 2004, the Software Improvement Group (SIG) introduced a new software monitoring service. Then a recent spin-off of CWI with a couple of clients and a vision, SIG has transformed itself ten years later into a respected (and sometimes feared) specialist in software quality assessment that helps a wide variety of organizations to manage their application portfolios, their development projects, and their software suppliers.

OSSMETER is a FP7 European project that aims to extend the state-of-the-art in the field of automated analysis and the measurement of open-source software (OSS). It also aims to develop a platform that will support decision makers in the process of discovering, comparing, assessing and monitoring the health, quality, impact and activity of OSS.

Due to the dynamic nature of cloud computing environments, continuous monitoring of the quality of cloud services is needed in order to satisfy business goals and enforce service-level agreements (SLAs). Current approaches for SLA specifications in IT services are not sufficient since SLAs are usually based on templates that are expressed in a natural language, making automated compliance verification and assurance tasks difficult. In such a context, the use of models at runtime becomes particularly relevant: such models can help retrieve data from the running system to verify SLA compliance and if the desired quality levels are not achieved, drive the dynamic reconfiguration of the cloud services architecture.

Dictō is a declarative language for specifying architectural rules that uses a single uniform notation. Once defined, the rules can automatically be validated using adapted off-the-shelf tools.

The data and software analysis platform Moose allows for the quick development of dedicated tools that can be customized at different levels. These tools are crucial for large software systems that are subject to continuous evolution.

With the boom in data mining which has occurred in recent years and higher processing powers, software repository mining now represents a promising tool for developing better software. Open software repositories, with their availability and wide spectrum of data attributes are an exciting testing ground for software repository mining and quality assessment research. In this project, the aim was to achieve improvements in software development processes in relation to change control, release planning, test recording, code review and project planning processes.

Code duplication is considered a widespread code smell, a symptom of bad code development practices or potential design issues. Code smells are also considered to be indicators of poor software maintainability. The refactoring cost associated with removing code clones can be very high, partly because of the number of different decisions that must be made regarding the kind of refactoring steps to apply. Here, we describe a tool that has been developed to suggest the best refactoring steps that could be taken to remove clones in Java code. Our approach is based on the classification of clones, in terms of their location in a class hierarchy, so that decisions can be made from a restricted set of refactorings that have been evaluated using multiple criteria.

Leveraging the wisdom of the crowd to improve software quality through the use of a recommendation system based on StackOverflow, a famous Q&A website for programmers.

RiVal is a newly released toolkit, developed during two ERCIM fellowships at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), for transparent and objective benchmarking of recommender systems software such as Apache Mahout, LensKit and MyMediaLite. This will ensure that robust and comparable assessments of their recommendation quality can be made.

For non-critical software systems, the use of light-weight formal evaluation methods can guarantee sufficient levels of quality.

Driven by a series of European projects, researchers from the Formal Methods and Tools lab of ISTI-CNR have developed a family of model-checking tools for the computer-aided verification of the correctness of software designs. To date, these tools have been applied to a range of case studies in the railway, automotive and telecommunication fields.

Applying a unique bottom-up approach, we (Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands)) worked collaboratively with ASML, the leading provider of complex lithography systems for the semiconductor industry, to assess the quality of QVTo model transformations. This approach combines sound qualitative methods with solid engineering to proactively improve QVTo quality in a practitioner setting.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands plead the case for more redundancy in software development as a way of improving the quality of outcomes and reducing overall costs.

Project ICEBERG investigated a novel approach to improving understanding of the real cost impacts of poor quality software and supporting the suite of management decisions required to take corrective action across the entire software development cycle.

For decades, software researchers have been chasing the goal of software quality through the development of rigorous and objective measurement frameworks and quality standards. However, in an increasingly agile world, this quest for a perfectly accurate and objective quantitative evaluation of software quality appears overrated and counter-productive in practice. In this context, we are investigating two complementary approaches to evaluating software quality, both of which are designed to take agility into account.

Technological small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that are involved in developing software often lack maturity in the development process. This can result in an increased risk of software quality issues and technological debt. Recently, standards have started to address the need for lightweight process improvements through the development of the ISO 29110 series. In this article, we look at how this series can successfully be applied in the areas of (self)-assessment, diagnosis and specific tooling support.

In recent years, software quality has begun to gain great importance, principally because of the key role software plays in our day-to-day lives. To control software quality, it is necessary to conduct evaluations of the software products themselves. The AQC Lab was established for this purpose and its core responsibility is evaluating the quality of software products against the ISO/IEC 25000 standard.

CWI’s Reo-to-C compiler can generate code that outperforms hand-crafted code written by a competent programmer. As such, compared to conventional approaches to parallel programming, our approach has the potential to not only improve software quality but also performance.