Towards a Quality-Aware Engineering Process for the Development of Web Applications

It is widely recognized that Web Engineering (WE) practices lack an impact on industry. One of the reasons for this fact is that Web applications developed with WE methodologies have not proven a better quality than those developed with creative practices. In this technical report we claim that one way to change such perception is including specific quality management activities as part of the WE process. In order to perform this inclusion in a sensible way, in this technical report we explore principles and achievements that, uncovered in different Web quality lines of research, provide insights into how to deal with quality in each of the different workflows that a typical WE process defines, from requirements to implementation. Also, in order to preserve the (semi-)automatic nature of WE processes, we propose the definition of measurable concepts, measures and decision criteria in a machine-readable way that allows for the automation of the quality evaluation process, thus preserving the MDE nature of WE processes. In this way we are providing the user of a WE methodology with the advantages associated with managing quality from the early stages of development with little extra development costs.