Quality evaluation and analysis for domain software: Application to management information system of power plant

•Establishing attribute model to illustrate attributes to be looked into.•Establishing evaluation model to illustrate computation logic of evaluation.•Establishing classifies model to illustrate quality levels and mapping conditions.•Analyzing quality bottleneck problems based on evaluation model data.

Context: Domain software plays an important role in the management of many enterprises; therefore, its quality is critical to these enterprises and impacts its selection, maintenance, and service quality evaluation to a great extent. Consequently, how to evaluate the quality of domain software has become an area that deserves more research. The existing research pays much attention to software for specific purposes and fields, or to specific stage of the software, which is not enough.Objective: This paper proposes a systematic quality evaluation method, which fully considers the generality, domain features, and application environment of domain software, and also supports subsequent analysis.Method: The quality evaluation method proposed in this paper defines all aspects of the domain software to be inspected by establishing an attribute model, obtains basic data on evaluation by analyzing and measuring evidence, tailor-makes the computing logic of quality evaluation score by establishing an evaluation model, and classifies domain software quality by establishing level model. This research verifies the applicability of evaluation by applying this method to management information system (MIS) in the field of a power plant.Results: The case example not only indicates that the proposed method can be applied to the quality evaluation and analysis of the power plant's MIS, but also its ease of usability.Conclusion: The method is applicable and can be easily used for the quality evaluation and analysis of the MIS in a power plant. Based on mechanisms, such as model customization and weight determination, this method also supports the quality evaluation and analysis of software applied in different fields. In the future, there will be a need to improve the objectivity and automation degree of the evaluation, and to apply and verify the method according to the different types of software in various fields.