Enabling the IT industry to specify and evaluate user-oriented quality

Until recently, the IT community has focused most of its attention on the software development process, particularly managing its improvement. However, this emphasis provides no guarantee for the ‘fitness-for-use" quality of the final software products as experienced by the actual users. While recent European pr~jects and standardisation efforts have addressed software product quality, this has primarily been from a "technical" point of view. Manufacturers of software wish to demonstrate ‘fitness-for-use" quality, preferably by means of generally accepted standards. They want to reduce the "time-to-market" and the number of releases. This can be done by taking the user needs into account efftctively, at an early stage of development. The time has come to bridge these gaps as a response to the actual user needs for software product quality.