Skip to main content

Algorithmic Complexity of the Truck Factor Calculation

  • Conference paper
Book cover Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8892))

Abstract

Software development projects differ in their sensitivity to losing developers. Some projects must stop already if they lose a few developers, while other projects can continue if the same number of developers leave the project. The TF quantifies these differences: It is the number of developers that would stop the project if they left the project. Multiple specific variants of the TF have been suggested in literature. This paper proves that some of these implementations are actually NP-hard to compute, including the promising worst-case metric TF min ,c . NP-hardness prevents their use for large software development projects. For the TF variants not proved to be NP-hard, this paper provides efficient algorithms. However, this paper argues that these TF variants have less explanatory power.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Beck, K., Andres, C.: Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley Professional (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bowler, M.: Truck factor (May 2005), http://www.agileadvice.com/2005/05/15/agilemanagement/truck-factor/ (accessed September 25, 2014)

  3. Goetgheluck, P.: Computing binomial coefficients. The American Mathematical Monthly 94(4), 360–365 (1987), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2323099

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Karp, R.M.: Reducibility among combinatorial problems. In: Miller, R.E., Thatcher, J.W., Bohlinger, J.D. (eds.) Complexity of Computer Computations. The IBM Research Symposia Series, pp. 85–103. Springer US (1972), http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2001-2_9

  5. Ricca, F., Marchetto, A., Torchiano, M.: On the difficulty of computing the truck factor. In: Caivano, D., Oivo, M., Baldassarre, M.T., Visaggio, G. (eds.) PROFES 2011. LNCS, vol. 6759, pp. 337–351. Springer, Heidelberg (2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21843-9_26

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Zazworka, N., Stapel, K., Knauss, E., Shull, F., Basili, V.R., Schneider, K.: Are Developers Complying with the Process: An XP Study. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2010, pp. 14:1–14:10. ACM, New York (2010), http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1852786.1852805

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Hannebauer, C., Gruhn, V. (2014). Algorithmic Complexity of the Truck Factor Calculation. In: Jedlitschka, A., Kuvaja, P., Kuhrmann, M., Männistö, T., Münch, J., Raatikainen, M. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8892. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13835-0_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13835-0_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-13834-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-13835-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics