Software Process Improvement: Results & Experience From the Field

Description

For over a decade, software process improvement (SPI) has been promoted as an approach to improve systematically the way software is developed and managed. Mostly this research and the relevant experience reports have been focussed on large software companies.

Conradi and his co-authors have collected the main results from four Norwegian industrial research and development projects on SPI carried out between 1996 and 2005, which, in contrast to other treatments, concentrated on small- and medium-sized companies, typically characterized by fast-changing environments and processes. The presentation is organized in five sections: general principles and methods of SPI, knowledge management for SPI, process modelling and electronic process guides, estimation methods, and object-oriented and component-based systems. A spectrum of empirical methods has been used, e.g. case studies, large-scale experiments, surveys and interviews, and action research.

The book mainly targets researchers and graduate students in (empirical) software engineering, and software professionals working in development or quality assurance.

Contents:

Section 1 Software Process Improvement - General Principles and Methods
1 Lessons Learned and Recommendations from Two Large Norwegian SPI Programmes
2 Improvisation in Small Software Organizations
3 An Empirical Investigation of the Key Factors for Success in Software Process Improvement
4 Evidence-Based Software Engineering for Practitioners
5 Challenges and Recommendations when Increasing the Realism of Controlled Software Engineering Experiments

Section 2 Knowledge Management for SPI
6 Postmortem Reviews: Purpose and Approaches in Software Engineering
7 Value-Based Knowledge Management - the Contribution
8 A Dynamic Model of Software Engineering Knowledge Creation
9 An Empirical Study of an Informal Knowledge Repository in a Medium-Sized Software Consulting Company
10 An Empirical Study on the Utility of Formal Routines to Transfer Knowledge and Experience

Section 3 Process Modelling and Electronic Process Guides
11 Tailoring RUP to a Defined Project Type: A Case Study
12 A Workshop-Oriented Approach for Defining Electronic Process Guides A Case Study
13 Empirical Investigation on Factors Affecting Software Developer Acceptance and Utilization of Electronic Process Guides
14 Six Theses on Software Process Research

Section 4 Estimation Methods
15 A Review of Studies on Expert Estimation of Software Development Effort
16 Reuse of Software Development Experiences - A Case Study
17 Effort Estimation of Use Cases for Incremental Large-Scale Software Development

Section 5 Empirical Studies in OO and Component-based Systems
18 Experiences from Introducing UML-based Development in a Large Safety-Critical Project
19 An Empirical Study on Off-the-Shelf Component Usage in Industrial Projects
20 Evaluating the Effect of a Delegated versus Centralized Control Style on the Maintainability of Object-Oriented Software