Quantifying the Value of New Technologies for Software Development

Introducing relevant software technologies may provide significant advantages to a software organization. Unfortunately, the value the technology may provide is almost never quantified. We describe a methodology for precise quantitative measurement of the value a software technology may add to the project in terms of the impact on quality and lead time. The methodology employs measures derived from version control and problem tracking repositories to determine the value of technology. We illustrate this approach in a detailed case study on the impact of using two particular technologies a version-sensitive source code editor and a domain engineered application environment in a telecommunications product. In both cases use of technology had a strong positive impact on the considered quality measures. The methodology relies on information commonly available in project version control and problem tracking systems and, therefore, can be widely and easily applied.