  Over time, software systems suffer gradual quality decay and therefore costs
can rise if organizations fail to take proactive countermeasures. Quality
control is the first step to avoiding this cost trap. Continuous quality
assessments help users identify quality problems early, when their removal is
still inexpensive; they also aid decision making by providing an integrated
view of a software system's current status. As a side effect, continuous and
timely feedback helps developers and maintenance personnel improve their skills
and thereby decreases the likelihood of future quality defects. To make regular
quality control feasible, it must be highly automated, and assessment results
must be presented in an aggregated manner to avoid overwhelming users with
data. This article offers an overview of tools that aim to address these
issues. The authors also discuss their own flexible, open-source toolkit, which
supports the creation of dashboards for quality control.
