Abstract

A software product is often behind schedule, over budget, non-conforming to requirements and of poor quality. Controlling and improving the processes used to develop software has been proposed as a primary remedy to these problems. The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University has published the Software Capability Maturity Model (SW-CMM) for use as a set of criteria to evaluate an organization's Process Maturity. The model is also used as a roadmap to improve a software development process 's maturity. The premise of the SW-CMM is that mature development processes deliver products on time, within budget, within requirements, and of high quality. This research examines the effects of Software Process Maturity, using the SWCMM, on software development effort. Effort is the primary determinant of software development cost and schedule. The technical challenge in this research is determining how much change in effort is due solely to changing Process Maturity when this change generally occurs concurrently with changes to other factors that also influence software development effort. The six mathematical models used in this research support the following conclusion: For the one hundred twelve projects in this sample, Software Process Maturity was a significant factor (95% confidence level) affecting software development effort. After normalizing for the effects of other effort influences, a one-increment change in the rating of Process Maturity resulted in a 15% to 21% reduction in effort. The modeling approach used in this analysis can be used in other areas of Software Engineering as well.

Citations