Software product quality: some thoughts about its evolution and perspectives in the AI years

“Quality is free” was the title of a famous 1979 book by Philip Crosby, one of the Total Quality Management (TQM) gurus that for many people could have been misleading. “Quality” is part of what currently are the so-called NFRs (Non- Functional Requirements), complementing FURs (Functional User Requirements) from a product-view perspective. Any requirement generates tasks/activities (thus efforts and costs, it’s not free at all…) and must be properly sized for improving project estimates from the early stages. Quality Models (QMs) constantly evolved from the mid ‘70s, from the FCM (Factor-Criteria-Model) until the current ISO models included in the SQuARe family (25000 series). The last model published in 2023 was the ISO/IEC 25059 about a revision of the 25010quality model in the light of these AI years. This paper will discuss from an evolutionary perspective what software quality has been, is and should/could be perceived and defined during next years, by a measurement perspective.