An empirical analysis of software productivity over time

The paper aims to investigate how software project productivity has changed over time. Within this overall goal we also compare productivity between different business sectors and seek to identify major drivers. We analysed a data set of more than 600 projects that have been collected from a number...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in11th IEEE International Software Metrics Symposium (METRICS'05) pp. 10 pp. - 37
Main Authors Premraj, R., Shepperd, M., Kitchenham, B., Forselius, P.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 2005
Subjects
Australia
Business
Companies
Computer industry
Construction industry
Data analysis
empirical analysis
Productivity
Project management
projects
Software engineering
Software measurement
software productivity
trend analysis
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Summary:The paper aims to investigate how software project productivity has changed over time. Within this overall goal we also compare productivity between different business sectors and seek to identify major drivers. We analysed a data set of more than 600 projects that have been collected from a number of Finnish companies since 1978. Overall, we observed a quite pronounced improvement in productivity over the entire time period, though, this improvement is less marked since the 1990s. However, the trend is not smooth. We also observed productivity variability between company and business sector. Whilst this data set is not a random sample so generalisation is somewhat problematic, we hope that it contributes to an overall body of knowledge about software productivity and thereby facilitates the construction of a bigger picture
ISBN:9780769523712
0769523714
ISSN:1530-1435
DOI:10.1109/METRICS.2005.8