# A Blockchain-Enabled Framework for Improving the Software Audit Process
## 4 Results and Discussion  
Confidence and well-informed software marketplaces depend on audit reports that are both thorough and accurate. While audit findings contribute to successful root cause analysis, future planning, generating recommendations, and many more, it is crucial that audit quality and consistency of execution be improved to preserve trust in the independent assurance they provide. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches to audit process executions have flaws that are somewhat offset by the other's benefits. Quantitative evaluation of the audit process lends itself well to establishing cause-and-effect relationships, testing hypotheses, and determining the opinions, attitudes, and practices of a large population, whereas qualitative evaluation of the audit process lends itself well to developing hypotheses and theories and describing processes such as decision making and communication. Quantitative research creates factual, trustworthy result data that are typically generalizable to wider groups, while qualitative research generates rich, comprehensive, and valid process data based on the participant's viewpoints and interpretations rather than the investigator's. In this study, the qualitative approach was chosen for the evaluation of SSFTA due to several reasons: the majority of existing studies focus on financial audits, whereas there are few studies on software audits; since the software is developed for and by humans, the qualitative approach provides more insight into the proposed software audit process. Furthermore, qualitative approaches investigate the limits and flaws of a process more thoroughly. They provide a deeper comprehension of the richness and diversity of human experience in all-natural contexts. We used a case study as a qualitative assessment method for the SSFTA evaluation. A case study is a research method used to develop a comprehensive, multifaceted knowledge of a complicated subject in its real-world setting. In order to evaluate the proposed methodology, we conducted a case study with a well-known software industry. The subject organization is a market leader in the software industry. It commenced operations in 1977. The organization has competence in a wide range of software solutions and IT services. Digital commerce, application development and integration, business applications, cloud services, data analysis and management, application development and integration, IT infrastructure, and business process outsourcing are among their areas of specialization. An online appointment was scheduled with the company through some reference. In this online session, we elaborated on the working and potentials of SSFTA to the participants. In the end, they were requested to fill out a questionnaire to evaluate the SSFTA based on three key parameters, namely, ease of use, security, and structure of SSFTA. The questionnaire consists of three sections. Section one includes a detailed description of SSFTA. Section two was related to the demographics of respondents, and section three consisted of questions related to the three measurement parameters mentioned above. The respondents were asked to provide their feedback about SSFTA on a Likert scale as follows: Strongly Agree = 5, Agree = 4, Neutral = 3, Disagree = 2, and Strongly Disagree = 1. The 12 representatives from the organization participated in the questionnaire, and the total and average of the strongly agree and agree was calculated. Below we discuss the details of responses against each parameter. Table 3 shows the questions that were asked by the respondents to evaluate the usability and ease of use of the SSFT. The respondents were asked to answer these questions using the Likert scale. Once all the responses were performed, the total of strongly agree and agree was calculated. A total of 70% was set as a threshold value, which means if 8 out of 12 respondents agree on a certain question, quality exists in the SSFT. Figure 4 shows the statistics of respondents for each question related to ease of use.