Software quality standards and their impact on commercial product development and customer satisfaction

Abstract

Meeting the challenges of an unstable and turbulent business environment is not easy; it is very much like Darwin's evolution theory “survival of the fittest”. In order to survive in the market place, it is important for service organizations to develop Quality Products to meet customer expectations by implementing some sort of Quality Standards. Despite the importance of successfully developing software products; success for many software firms is limited due to lack of Software Quality Standards, high failure rate, inconsistent development and adaption time by the customer. There is a marked difference in quality and performance of software products that are developed with ISO SQA standards. Therefore, it is critical to expand the knowledge of the factors that impact innovation efforts and performance. Organizations must find ways by which they can effectively develop reliable and durable software products. If service firms are to significantly improve their success rate, they need to produce Qualitative Software Products which can significantly influence customer satisfaction. In last few years the software industry has witnessed a significant growth and rapid changes worldwide as well as nationally. Customer and employee satisfaction is a critical issue in the achievement of any business system. One of the key challenges and tests of this industry is how they satisfy and retain their clients keeping software product quality at top which that determines the perceived performance of any organization. This thesis tries to search a model which can best describe the Software Quality Standards and their impact on commercial products envelopment and customer satisfaction and evaluate it in the Pakistani industry and its impact on overall organizational performance. Taking an operative viewpoint on the relations between software quality standards and customer satisfaction on commercial products, this study will examine the relationships among customer satisfaction, product safety, product development time and the effect of implementation of ISO SQA standards on these factors. A research model is established which is tested empirically by conducting a survey in software houses throughout Pakistan. The research evaluates the impact of deploying Quality Assurance practices on the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the software products and if these quality control measures have any impact on enhancing client satisfaction. . It is observed that customer satisfaction is significantly related to product safety and product development time which can be enhanced positively through implementation of Software Quality standards.