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An empirical study of the impact of team size on software development effort

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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the impact of team size on the software development effort. Using field data of over 200 software projects from various industries, we empirically test the impact of team size and other variables—such as software size in function points, ICASE tool and programming language type—on software development effort. Our results indicate that software size in function points significantly impacts the software development effort. The two-way interactions between function points and use of ICASE tool, and function points and language type are significant as well. Additionally, the interactions between team size and programming language type, and team size and use of ICASE tool were all significant.

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Notes

  1. Our data did not contain the team member skills. The team with better skills in using ICASE tools is likely to see a reduction in software development effort. We assume that our data contains team skills that are uniformly distributed and effort reduction by experienced programmers will be cancelled by the higher effort of inexperienced programmers leading to no overall change in the software development effort.

  2. Since complex large size projects typically have more experienced programmers and clear specifications, we assume that software size and use of ICASE tools will reduce effort.

  3. We use entropy because these variables take discrete values (A, B, and C) and continuous value tests such as t-test are not suitable for testing difference in means for discrete variables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Systems, School of Business Administration, Capital College, Pennsylvania State University, 777 W. Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA, 17057, USA

    Parag C. Pendharkar

  2. MIS and Decision Sciences, Eberly College of Business & Information Technology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, 15705, USA

    James A. Rodger

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  1. Parag C. Pendharkar
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Correspondence to Parag C. Pendharkar.

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Pendharkar, P.C., Rodger, J.A. An empirical study of the impact of team size on software development effort. Inf Technol Manage 8, 253–262 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-006-0005-3

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