Article

Evidence-based decision making in lean software project management

Authors:

Brian Fitzgerald,

Mariusz Musiał,

Klaas-Jan StolAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE Companion 2014: Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

Pages 93 - 102

https://doi.org/10.1145/2591062.2591190

Published: 31 May 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Many professions evolve from their origins as a creative craft process to a more product-centered industrial process. Software development is on such an evolutionary trajectory. A major step in this evolution is the progression from ad hoc to more rigorous evidence-based decision-making in software development project management. This paper extends theory and practice in relation to lean software development using such an evidence-based approach. Based on a comprehensive dataset of software development metrics, gathered in a longitudinal case study over a 22-month period, the Erlang-C model is used to analyze different software development parameters and to guide management decision-making in relation to development resources. The analysis reveals how `gut-feel' and intuition can be replaced by evidence-based decision-making, and reveals how incorrect assumptions can underpin decisions which as a consequence do not achieve the desired outcome.

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Cited By

Sarkar TMoharana BRakhra MCheema G(2024)Comparative Analysis of Empirical Research on Agile Software Development Approaches2024 11th International Conference on Reliability, Infocom Technologies and Optimization (Trends and Future Directions) (ICRITO)10.1109/ICRITO61523.2024.10522134(1-6)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRITO61523.2024.10522134
Tran AYskout KJoosen W(2024)Threat Modeling: A Rough Diamond or Fool’s Gold?Software Architecture. ECSA 2023 Tracks, Workshops, and Doctoral Symposium10.1007/978-3-031-66326-0_8(120-129)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2024
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Matthies CDobrigkeit F(2021)Experience vs Data: A Case for More Data-Informed Retrospective ActivitiesLean and Agile Software Development10.1007/978-3-030-67084-9_8(130-144)Online publication date: 6-Jan-2021
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Index Terms

Evidence-based decision making in lean software project management
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Metrics
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE Companion 2014: Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 2014

741 pages

ISBN:9781450327688

DOI:10.1145/2591062

General Chair:
Pankaj Jalote
IIIT-Delhi, India
,
Program Chairs:
Lionel Briand
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
,
André van der Hoek
University of California, Irvine, USA

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering

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TCSE: IEEE Computer Society's Tech. Council on Software Engin.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 31 May 2014

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ICSE '14: 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 31 - June 7, 2014

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Cited By

Sarkar TMoharana BRakhra MCheema G(2024)Comparative Analysis of Empirical Research on Agile Software Development Approaches2024 11th International Conference on Reliability, Infocom Technologies and Optimization (Trends and Future Directions) (ICRITO)10.1109/ICRITO61523.2024.10522134(1-6)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRITO61523.2024.10522134
Tran AYskout KJoosen W(2024)Threat Modeling: A Rough Diamond or Fool’s Gold?Software Architecture. ECSA 2023 Tracks, Workshops, and Doctoral Symposium10.1007/978-3-031-66326-0_8(120-129)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66326-0_8
Matthies CDobrigkeit F(2021)Experience vs Data: A Case for More Data-Informed Retrospective ActivitiesLean and Agile Software Development10.1007/978-3-030-67084-9_8(130-144)Online publication date: 6-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67084-9_8
dos Santos PBeltrão Ade Souza BTravassos G(2018)On the benefits and challenges of using kanban in software engineering: a structured synthesis studyJournal of Software Engineering Research and Development10.1186/s40411-018-0057-16:1Online publication date: 19-Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40411-018-0057-1
Santos WCunha JMoura HMargaria T(2017)Practical implications from a preliminary theory of simplicity in agile software development based on a qualitative study2017 XLIII Latin American Computer Conference (CLEI)10.1109/CLEI.2017.8226449(1-10)Online publication date: Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/CLEI.2017.8226449
Vogel BKilamo TKurti ACrnkovic I(2015)Teaching Distributed Agile Development to Software ProfessionalsProceedings of the 2015 European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops10.1145/2797433.2797465(1-8)Online publication date: 7-Sep-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2797433.2797465
Fitzgerald BStol KTichy MBosch JGoedicke MLarsson M(2014)Continuous software engineering and beyond: trends and challengesProceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Rapid Continuous Software Engineering10.1145/2593812.2593813(1-9)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2593812.2593813

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