A review of quality frameworks in information systems

Abstract

Quality is a multidimensional concept that has different meanings in different contexts and perspectives. In the domain of Information system, quality is often understood as the result of an IS development process and as the quality of an IS product. Many models and frameworks have been proposed for evaluating IS quality. However, as yet there is not a commonly accepted framework or standard of IS quality. Typically, researchers propose a set of characteristics, so-called quality factors contributing to the quality of IS. Different stakeholders’ perspectives are resulting in multiple definitions of quality factors of IS. For instance, some approaches are based on the IS delivery process for the selection of quality factors; while some other approaches do not clearly explain the rationale of their selection. Moreover, often relations or impacts among selected quality factors are not taken into account. Quality aspects of information are frequently considered isolated from IS quality. The impact of IS quality on information quality seems to be neglected in most approaches. Our research aims to incorporate these levels, by which we propose an IS quality framework based on IS architecture. Considering user and IS developer’s perspectives, different quality factors are identified for various abstraction levels. Besides, the presentation on impacts among different quality factors helps to retrieve the root cause of IS defects. Thus, our framework provides a systematic view on quality of information and IS.