The Measurement Of User Oriented Software Flexibility

The basic meaning of software flexibility is the ability of software to be changedeasily. Users can use it to adapt to their needs for the change of environment andrequirement. Flexible software system means that users can adjust software in anefficiently way to meet the needs of the change of environment and requirement withoutchanging the source code. Flexibility is accepted as an attribute to evaluate the quality ofsoftware, the importance of flexibility is being recognized in the design and evaluation ofsoftware. However, users can hardly find a standard and method to measure theflexibility of software. Developers have no quantitative methods to guide the design offlexible software. It is difficult to know exactly how much benefits the users can havefrom the flexible software. Therefore, it is urgent to have the theories and methods tomeasure flexibility. Compared with architecture flexibility, more users are awared to useroriented flexibility, so it is right to begin with user oriented flexibility.Firstly, the dissertation gives the definition of user oriented flexibility and itscharacteristics. The definition and characteristics of flexible window are given which arethe bases to build the measurement model of user oriented flexibility. The formaldescription of the model of software change, the model of software flexible change andthe model of state change of flexible software is also given.Secondly, it puts forward the definition and characteristics of the user-orientedflexible window and proposes the measurement model of flexibility based on flexiblewindow and its formal definition. The dissertation establishes a measurement model withthe core elements: flexible window, manipulate complexity and flexible distance. It alsogives the methods and procedures to measure flexible distance based on functionalpoints.Furthermore, it put forward the method to measure manipulative complexity basedon fuzzy Delphi and fuzzy AHP. It gives the score table of each index of manipulatecomplexicity, and eventually gets the method and procedures to measure manipulatecomplexicity. Finally, a case study of a human resource and salary management system is carriedout to illustrate the concretely analysis and measurement process, all of the five flexiblewindows are given, manipulative complexity, flexible distance and flexible degree offlexible windows are calculated respectively. The paper analysises the measurementresult about flexible capacity, the usefulness of the model is illuminated.