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Asia Pacific Requirements Engeneering Conference

APRES 2017: Requirements Engineering for Internet of Things pp 15–25Cite as

An Empirical Study of the Software Development Process, Including Its Requirements Engineering, at Very Large Organization: How to Use Data Mining in Such a Study

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Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 809))

Abstract

Very Large Organization (VLO) develops and manufacturers hardware and software products, with each product being developed in its own project. Each project, from its inception, maintains a database that contains a wealth of data pertaining to its software development lifecycle. To empirically study VLO’s software development process, the authors mined the data from seven consecutive VLO projects to determine whether the data exhibit any anomalies and whether these anomalies can help assess a project’s level of success. Some anomalies provide evidence of what VLO does well, while other anomalies highlight possible areas of improvement. Through the anomalies in the mined data, the organization can direct additional focus and research to specific areas of the development process, particularly its requirements engineering, to improve the likelihood of success for future projects.

While describing the results of the empirical study, the paper also shows how such a study can be conducted even when the mined data are not very detailed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In empirical work, the golden data are the data to which each subject’s data are compared to evaluate the subject’s data. The researchers try to make the golden data completely correct, but know that they may not be.

  2. 2.

    In the rest of this paper “deviation” means “deviation from the golden project criteria”.

  3. 3.

    Lest the reader think that DeMarco’s point is only a tautology, please note that DeMarco’s observation is that in the typical late project he has known, the project was started well after the date that it should have been started in order to be able to guarantee finishing by the required deadline, everyone on the project knew that the project was starting late, and all on the project agreed to start the project anyway despite the certainty that the project had no chance to finish on time.

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Acknowledgment

Daniel Berry’s work was supported in part by a Canadian NSERC grant NSERC-RGPIN227055-15.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Colin M. Werner & Daniel M. Berry

Authors
  1. Colin M. Werner
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  2. Daniel M. Berry
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Correspondence to Colin M. Werner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia

    Massila Kamalrudin

  2. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia

    Sabrina Ahmad

  3. Riphah International University, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Naveed Ikram

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Werner, C.M., Berry, D.M. (2018). An Empirical Study of the Software Development Process, Including Its Requirements Engineering, at Very Large Organization: How to Use Data Mining in Such a Study. In: Kamalrudin, M., Ahmad, S., Ikram, N. (eds) Requirements Engineering for Internet of Things. APRES 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 809. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7796-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7796-8_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-7795-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-7796-8

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