Systematically combining process simulation and empirical data in support of decision analysis in software development

Abstract

Decision-making is a complex and important task in software engineering. The current state-of-the-practice is rather non-systematic as it typically relies upon personal experience without using explicit models. Empirical studies can help but are to some extent context dependent and costly to conduct. Typically it is not efficient or even possible to conduct empirical studies for a large number of context parameter variations. We propose to build on a set of systematic empirical studies to fill gaps in context variable space with simulation: (a) Simulation can use the empirical results from different contexts and apply them to a planning situation as appropriate. (b) The analysis of simulation results can point out situations and factors for which conducting empirical studies would be most worthwhile. This paper presents a general decision model, a simulation framework, and examples for different decisions to use V&V activities in software development (e.g., under which conditions is a V&V activity, such as a re-inspection, worthwhile) to demonstrate practical applications of the general model.