ISO/IEC 9126:2001 Software engineering – Product quality

Knowing the quality of the software you are developing or selecting can be critical to the success of the organization. To evaluate the product quality of software requires specifying the quality characteristics and then measuring them against these specifications. Every software product has a purpose and use, so it is important that the metrics used are valid and appropriate for the situation. 9126 can be used together with ISO/IEC 14598 as the evaluation method.

ISO/IEC 9126 supports this evaluation process through the definition of six quality characteristics which can be used to model the software product. 9126 can be used to ensure that both functional and non-functional customer and user requirements are specified in a manner that ensure they can be measured. How else can one be sure you’re getting what you need unless you can verify that the requirements have been met?