MSc Research Internship (Thesis 2026)

*Estimating the risk and value of software qualities ===================================================== SIG supervisor: Lodewijk Bergmans [lodewijk.bergmans@softwareimprovementgroup.com] Problem Statement ----------------- Decisions in software engineering are in general determined by three main factors: technology, people and process, and economics. Software quality has proven to be an increasingly important factor in the success or failure of software systems. But for development organizations to invest in software quality, they must understand what the potential risks and benefits are, and what the costs are of improving software quality. As of today, there are no integrated methodologies to tackle this issue for a wide range of software qualities. At SIG, the Cost Estimation Model [Nuhogro 2011] assesses the impact of maintainability on development effort and serves as a key technique for reporting and decision support. However, this is currently lacking for other software quality characteristics. The FAIR methodology [FAIR, Open-FAIR, Freund 2015] provides a method for quantifying (the monetary value of) risk and impact, primarily focused on cyber-security risks. It uses a structured approach for quantifying and combining multiple factors that determine overall risk, and presents results based on ranges of likely outcomes. Research Question ----------------- The main research question of this proposal is: can the FAIR approach -or perhaps an alternative- be adapted or