Model-driven gap analysis for the fulfillment of quality standards in software development processes

Society today is moving towards rapid digitalization of almost every aspect of our lives. From healthcare and transport to work or entertainment, we depend on software products that need to function properly. The adequate construction of these software products can be evaluated and certified by means of quality standards. However, adopting quality standards is a complex and time-consuming task that requires experienced practitioners with advanced knowledge about standards and development practices. This presents a dichotomy for development companies that are transitioning to more agile schemes, where the necessary quality knowledge is scarce and poorly documented, and is slowly learnt and applied by novel practitioners. To overcome these issues, this paper presents a model-driven approach to automate the analysis of software development processes that must be aligned to quality standards. The approach has been implemented in an open-source tool and applied to a case study to automatically generate a gap analysis by reusing expert knowledge related to the ISO 9001 standard. The application has demonstrated it is possible to reduce the effort required from expert practitioners to perform the analysis and improve development processes to ensure the fulfillment of specific quality standards.