In this paper we present findings from our empirical study of software process improvement (SPI) implementation. We aim to provide SPI practitioners with insight into designing appropriate SPI implementation initiatives in order to achieve better results. Thirty-four interviews were conducted with Australian practitioners. Three SPI implementation issues were investigated: reasons for embarking...

Software estimation cost drivers are in many cases abstract concepts that are better estimated by breaking them down in a number of second– level aspects. This raises the need for inquiry regarding the most appropriate aggregation processes for them, since they significantly impact in the final cost estimates. Recent research on aggregation operator design has resulted in a number of families o...

Analogy-based estimation seems be a very promising estimation methods. A large Norwegian IT consulting company is going to use analogy-based method for further effort estimation. Thus, a historical project database must be built. Several issues have come up when discussing the feasibility of building such a project database. One challenging issue is which projects should be involved in the data...

This paper presents an improved software estimation model, which uses to estimate developing effort of e-Learning's contents. This model is called the e-Learning courseware Effort Estimate Model (EEEM). This model uses special designed storyboard to delineate the e-Learning courseware's contents and define the measurement metrics. Research was conducted using statistical data from the real worl...

Jerry Smith is the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of a global consulting and training company that specializes in object-oriented technology. He has specialized in software development, objectoriented technology, and management for over 15 years. He is the principle scientist for a long-term, multiproject research effort focusing on the best-practice techniques used to transfer and retain inform...

We present an assessment of an empirical study aiming at building effort estimation models for corrective maintenance projects. We show results from the application of the prediction models to a new corrective maintenance project within the same enterprise and the same type of software systems used in a previous study. The data available for the new project are finer grained according to the in...

This paper investigates proposed code-based measures for multimedia courseware as part of an on-going program of research into effort estimation models. The proposed code-based size measures are analysed using source code and project data from WinlEcon courseware written in the ToolBook authoring language. Statistical analysis of a priori, ToolBook specific and portable subsets of 47 code measu...

This paper aims to provide the software estimation research community with a better understanding of the meaning of, and relationship between, two statistics that are often used to assess the accuracy of predictive models: the mean magnitude relative error, MMRE, and the number of predictions within 25% of the actuals, pred(25). We demonstrate that MMRE and pred(25) are, respectively, measures ...

Business Process management Systems (BPMS) are highly integrated in the IT of organizations. They are at the core of business. Thus, migrating from one BPMS solution to another is not a common task. However, there are forces that are pushing organizations to do this step, e.g. maintenance costs of legacy BPMS or needed additional functionality. Beforehand, risk and effort must be evaluated. Thi...