Reports and research

This page is intended for articles, papers, reports etc. on understanding the root casues for overrun budgets, delayed projects, inadequate software quality etc. and identifying key measures to eliminate the root cases.

All contributions on interesting articles, papers, research etc. are appreciated.
Please mail info@infotechconsulting.se

The Standish Group www.standishgroup.com
Independent analysis and research organisation that produces reprots and papers. Are known for their Chaos reports. The more recent report requires a subscripton but some interesting reports can also be downloaded free of charge from: www.standishgroup.com/sample_research/index.php

Some Capers Jones articles www.spr.com/news/articles.htm
A recent report from Capers Jones "Conflict and litigation between software clients and developers" provides interesting readings on performance and quaility in software devlopment.

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology's)
NIST is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration. NIST's mission is to develop and promote measurement, standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life. NIST has recently (May 2002) published a comprehensive (309 pages) and very interesting report on project statistics and experiences based on data from a large number of software projects www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/n02-10.htm.

The report shows that up to some 70 % of the defects in systems development are introduced in the specification phase and the remaining 30 % are introduced later in the Technical Solution process. The report also states that only 5 % of the specification inadequacies are corrected in the specification phase and the remaining 95 % are detected later in the project or after delivery there the cost for correction in average is 22 times higher compared to a correction directly in the specification effort.

The NIST report concludes that extensive testing is essentail, however testing detects the dominating specification errors late in the process.

SEI has an alterantive view on improving software development with the CMM/CMMI model for software development. The SEI vision is 'The right software, delivered defect free, on time and on cost, every time. "Right software" implies software that satisfies requirements for functionality, performance, and cost throughout its lifetime. "Defect-free" software is achieved either through exhaustive testing after coding or by developing the code right the first time'.

Copyright @ 2003 - 2008 InfoTech Consulting AB