Quality characteristics

Deliver value with the right quality at speed. That's what organizations ask of their IT-teams. To determine the right quality the teams use the quality characteristics. These are a very useful tool to identify various characteristics of quality that are important for the stakeholders of an IT-system.

Functional testing usually takes up most of the effort and time spent on testing. Often however, the non-functional testing gets less attention than it should, because many IT-failures relate to non-functional problems. [more info: functional and non-functional testing]

ISO 25010 quality characteristics for product quality

ISO25010 characteristics for product quality

The quality characteristics and their subcharacteristics for product quality are:

  • Functional suitability – The degree to which a product or system provides functions that meet stated and implied needs when used under specified conditions.
    Functional completeness
    Functional correctness
    Functional appropriateness
  • Performance efficiency – The performance relative to the amount of resources used under stated condition.
    Time behavior
    Resource utilization
    Capacity
  • Compatibility – The degree to which a product, system or component can exchange information with other products, systems or components, and/or perform its required functions, while sharing the same hardware or software environment.
    Co-existence
    Interoperability
  • Usability – The degree to which a product or system can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. Appropriateness recognizability
    Learnability
    Operability
    User error protection
    User interface aesthetics
    Accessibility
  • Reliability – The degree to which a system, product or component performs specified functions under specified conditions for a specified period of time.
    Maturity
    Availability
    Fault tolerance
    Recoverability
  • Security – The degree to which a product or system protects information and data so that persons or other products or systems have the degree of data access appropriate to their types and levels of authorization.
    Confidentiality
    Integrity

    Non-repudiation
    Accountability
    Authenticity
  • Maintainability – The degree of effectiveness and efficiency with which a product or system can be modified by the intended maintainers.
    Modularity
    Reusability
    Analysability
    Modifiability
    Testability
  • Portability – The degree of effectiveness and efficiency with which a system, product or component can be transferred from one hardware, software or other operational or usage environment to another.
    Adaptability
    Installability
    Replaceability

Detailed information about these characteristics and their subcharacteristics can be found in [ISO25010 2011].

ISO25010 quality characteristics for quality in use

ISO25010 characteristics for quality in use


The quality characteristics and their subcharacteristics for quality in use are:

  • EffectivenessThe accuracy and completeness with which users achieve specified goals. (no subcharacteristics)
  • EfficiencyThe resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve goals. (no subcharacteristics)
  • Satisfaction The degree to which user needs are satisfied when a product or system is used in a specified context of use.
    Usefulness
    Trust
    Pleasure
    Comfort
  • Freedom from riskThe degree to which a product or system mitigates the potential risk to economic status, human life, health, or the environment.
    Economic risk mitigation
    Health and safety risk mitigation
    Environmental risk mitigation
  • Context coverageThe degree to which a product or system can be used with effectiveness, efficiency, freedom from risk and satisfaction in both specified contexts of use and in contexts beyond those initially explicitly identified.
    Context completeness
    Flexibility

Detailed information about these characteristics and their subcharacteristics can be found in [ISO25010 2011].

Sogeti has defined two extensions to the ISO25010 standard. The first extension was published in 2018 and contains 3 additional product quality characteristics related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. The second extension was published in 2022 and contains 1 additional characteristic for quality in use about Sustainability.