Cost and quality considerations in software product management

In this dissertation, we study the interactions among the important attributes of costs and quality in software product development and maintenance. This dissertation comprises of three main parts. In the first part, we model the relationship between life-cycle cost and conformance quality in commercial software products. Further, we study the impact of various factors related to product, people, technology and software process on the life-cycle cost of the product and the quality of the products delivered to the customers. We validate this model using data collected from the software industry. Based on our analysis of 43 software products, we find that life-cycle cost reduces significantly for products with higher conformance quality. We also find that disciplined software process and personnel capability of the team improves product quality. Our analysis also establishes a positive association between higher investments in the front-end stages of product development and product quality.;In the second part of this dissertation, we study the relationship among multiple quality attributes of software products and the overall customer satisfaction measure. We model the utility to the customers from using the software products as a function of seven quality attributes. We estimate the differential importance of these quality attributes in distinct product and customer segments based on data collected from over 2500 customers of a leading software organization. Our results indicate that all seven factors influence customer's overall satisfaction in varying degrees. We find that capability and usability of product are the leading drivers of customer satisfaction. We also observe significant differences across the product and customer segments. We illustrate the use of customer satisfaction information to software managers through Quality Function Deployment in software design.;In the third part of this thesis, we address the problem of increasing software maintenance costs in a custom software environment. We specifically study the software maintenance problems as seen by a manager in a centralized MIS department that develops information systems for various user groups in a corporation. We develop a stochastic model for the maintenance decisions of an information systems manager who faces uncertainties in user requirements changes. We characterize the optimal maintenance policy and provide managerial insights for performing a major update to the software system through parametric analysis of maintenance environment and cost functions.