Re: Questions on the Draft

[James Kempf <James.Kempf@Sun.COM>]

One school of software quality measurment advocates taking the number
of reported bugs and dividing by the number of lines of code to
come up with a number to quantify software quality. It is easy to
track.

This fails to capture, for example, the difficulty users have in installing
and using the software. A flawed installation procedure may end up with
users trashing their existing system, a flawed GUI may end up with
the user giving up on the tool in frustration and buying the competitor.

In a similar way, billing based on the number of packets is a simple
way to quantify access charges, but it fails to take into account
qualitative factors, such as that users (in the US at least) don't
like to pay that way and have historically avoided using services
that have such models. 

So if you want to design a service that people want to use, it is
probably a good idea not to charge by packet, and instead figure
out other ways to make additional money from the basic access.

This may be different in Japan and Europe, however.

		jak

>From: "Atsushi Takeshita" <takeshita@dcl.docomo-usa.com>
>To: "Burke Chris-CCB007" <Chris.Burke@motorola.com>, <more@ops.ietf.org>
>Subject: Re: Questions on the Draft
>Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 21:48:14 -0700
>X-Priority: 3
>X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
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>
>Chris,
>
>> I understand the appeal of per-packet pricing. But to me, it makes about
>as much sense as measuring software quality based on defects per line of
>code - something done not because it makes sense, or because it correlates
>to value, but because its easy and feels "quantitative".
>
>I don't understand what you mean by "measuring software
>quality based on defects per line of code".
>Could you please explain more?
>
>------------------------------------------
>TAKESHITA, Atsushi
>DoCoMo Communications Laboratories USA, Inc.
>takeshita@dcl.docomo-usa.com
>Tel: 408-451-4705 / Fax: 408-573-1090
>------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>