Timeline prediction framework for iterative software engineering projects with changes

• Main Authors: BERKLING, Kay, KIRAGIANNIS, Georgios, ZUNDEL, Armin, DATTA, Subhajit
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2008
• Subjects: Software projects; simulation tools; prediction capability; iterations; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6008; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7011/viewcontent/2009_resp_dist_and_timeline_prediction_pv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Even today, software projects still suffer from delays and budget overspending. The causes for this problem are compounded when the project team is distributed across different locations and generally attributed to the decreasing ability to communicate well (due to cultural, linguistic, and physical distance). Many projects, especially those with off-shoring component, consist of small iterations with changes, deletions and additions, yet there is no formal model of the flow of iterations available. A number of commercially available project prediction tools for projects as a whole exist, but the model adaptation process by iteration, if it exists, is unclear. Furthermore, no project data is available publicly to train on and understand the iterative process. In this work, we discuss parameters and formulas that are well founded in the literature and demonstrate their use within a simulation tool. Project timeline prediction capability is demonstrated on various scenarios of change requests. On a real-world example, we show that iteration-based data collection is necessary to train both the parameters and formulas to accurately model the software engineering process to gain a full understanding of complexities in software engineering process.