In the periphery of V.O.’s field of expertise – protecting
intellectual property – there are several professional service
providers who can help your company. Especially when your company
is still in its developing stage, such help can increase your
company’s value. After all, ultimately this is also the goal of
your intellectual property. Such service providers include software service providers, tax attorneys and
accountants. Together they constitute the ‘ecosystem’ and
contribute to the success of your innovative company. In this
section, we shed light on a number of these services. This time:
the assessment of your business software.

Scalability

In the assessment of the quality of a business, scalability is
an important indicator for the quality and the appraisal of a
business. The software system can be a limiting factor in all
this.

Requiring large investments, these systems at the same time are
often adaptable to a limited extent only. These systems require
large investments. At the same time, these systems are often
limited in their adaptability. Then it is useful to be able to
measure and manage the quality of software. Especially when the
company’s patents have been materialized in the software.
ISO25010, a standard for software quality, enables you to do
so.

Product quality and suitability for use

ISO25010 comes in useful in a due diligence audit in which the
question can be asked whether your software systems are
future-proof. In other words: is the software a modern piece of
technology that can easily be adapted in accordance with the
company’s growth, or will substantial investments be required
in order for it to become scalable?

The ISO25010 standard distinguishes between Product Quality and
Suitability for Use. Product Quality indicates to what extent the
software is properly built, often summarized as the technical
quality of a system. Suitability for Use indicates whether the
system actually does what it is supposed to do, often referred to
as functional quality.

“Organizations usually are automatically attentive to
functional quality. After all, if the system doesn’t do what it
should do, users will start complaining. Technical quality is less
visible, if at all, to software system owners. They’ll often
have to rely on the opinions of experts, or they count the number
of bugs reported to them. There is a better way, however. Analysis
techniques are available for continuity testing of the software
code, the ‘sources’,” says Jan Willem Klerkx, CEO at
BonCode, a company specializing in software
quality issues consultancy.

Building inspection for software systems

Companies such as BonCode have tools for the continuity testing
of the software’s static source code. A tool measures
fundamental things such as the size of the system, the size of the
modules in the system, whether a logical coherence can be
discovered, whether many duplicates of the codes can be found, and
whether coding standards are followed (or violated).

Says Mr. Klerkx: “By assessing these measurements and
relating them to previous measurements, we’re able to provide a
neutral and objective picture of the code’s quality.
Particularly in combination with an expert opinion assessing
whether the technology is an understandable choice given the
application and market. That way, a measurement results in an
independent opinion on a software system. A dashboard filled with
measurements is a step up from a PowerPoint full of opinions.
It’s a kind of building inspection, not for buildings, but for
software systems.”

Other applications of source code analysis technologies

In addition to once-only inspections, statistical code analysis
can also be used for monitoring large projects. By measuring, and
presenting weekly, the production of software teams, a quality
system is created. That way, software engineers will know whether
the software they produced has the expected quality and the client
is kept up to speed. He’ll be emailed a weekly report: a score
on a scale from 0 to 100 indicating performance. Without any
knowledge of software, he’ll still be in control.

Decisive

For companies wishing to successfully market their inventions,
the quality of a software system is of vital importance. In
addition to sufficient potential of the intellectual property
already present, it may for instance be decisive for investors who
want to furnish fresh capital.

Protect and patent your software or app

Are you curious about the ways software can be protected?
We’ve gathered all the information on this page. Do you need assistence in
protecting your software or app? Our experts will be happy to advise you.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.