Success Arguments: Establishing Confidence in Software Development

Abstract. In this paper, we introduce success arguments. These rigorous arguments capture developers’ rationales for believing that their software development efforts will succeed. We define success arguments, showing how the main success claim and the structure of a logical argument permit the developer to record and explain any form of evidence that would help to convince a skeptical audience that the effort will meet a balance of stakeholder goals that is acceptable to the stakeholders. We describe a notation for success arguments and discuss the role of success arguments in establishing confidence in the software development process. Using an example drawn from industrial experience, we illustrate how success arguments can be used to spot flaws in a given planned process. We also show how success arguments can be used to analyze existing software process models, illustrating our discussion with an analysis of the arguments underlying the Spiral model and Extreme Programming. Finally, we present some details of the engineering processes that surround success arguments, including procedures for deriving, amending, and verifying them.