What is the expected effect of Type of Development Methodology on Software Productivity?

Research Question

Main question:
What evidence is there for the accuracy/usefulness of the prediction and measurement methods?

Secondary Questions:
1) Is there any measurement that can support  prediction and measurement methods? If so, is it always true for different software processes?

2) Which factors (or drivers or constructs) have been used to define/compose/describe such prediction and measurement  methods?

Search String

(("software process" OR "software development" OR "software engineering processes" OR "business information system" OR "software maintenance" OR "software project" OR "open source project" OR "OSS project") AND (productivity OR efficiency OR "process performance" OR "development performance" OR "software performance" OR "project performance" OR "prediction method" OR "measurement method") AND (measure OR metric OR model OR predict OR estimate OR measurement OR estimation OR prediction) AND (empirical OR validation OR evaluation OR experiment OR example OR simulation OR analysis OR study OR interview))

Inclusion Criteria

• To talk about: Performance, productivity or efficiency of software development, software processes, software projects, software developers, or; Relations between different direct measurements or attributes (like size and effort, or reliability and effort, lead-time and resources, or multivariate relations) that are used to characterize the performance, productivity or efficiency of software development, software processes, software projects or software developers. Proof of concept, experiment, case study, example or other empirical research methods to show its applicability and usefulness/accuracy. It is also reasonable to consider papers that are based on real-world data from software repositories.

Exclusion Criteria

• Productivicty (efficiency) measurement and prediction is not the main focus. Talking about direct measures that are not combined with other measures and thus no claims regarding productivity, efficiency and performance are possible. The synthesis of evidence is based on the primary studies identified by the search. The secondary studies are excluded from the actual synthesis and results. Talking about measures for single techniques, which do not give an indication how well organizations or teams performs on the overall process level or within a development phase. Studies that have not evaluated a solution (be it in an experiment, proof of concept, or a case study) shall be excluded.

• Software development productivity of Japanese enterprise applications
• A comparative analysis of the agile and traditional software development processes productivity
• Knowledge sharing in offshore software development: A vendor perspective
• Software process diversity: conceptualization, measurement, and analysis of impact on project performance
• Effect of Model Based Software Development on Productivity of Enhancement Tasks--An Industrial Study

• Knowledge sharing in offshore software development: A vendor perspective
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Software process diversity: conceptualization, measurement, and analysis of impact on project performance
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• A comparative analysis of the agile and traditional software development processes productivity
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Effect of Model Based Software Development on Productivity of Enhancement Tasks--An Industrial Study
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Software development productivity of Japanese enterprise applications
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence

• Development Methodology affecting Software Productivty
• Evidence based on the paper "Effect of Model Based Software Development on Productivity of Enhancement Tasks--An Industrial Study"
• Evidence based on the paper "A comparative analysis of the agile and traditional software development processes productivity"
• Evidence based on the paper "Software development productivity of Japanese enterprise applications"
• Evidence based on the paper "Software process diversity: conceptualization, measurement, and analysis of impact on project performance"
• Evidence based on the paper "Knowledge sharing in offshore software development: A vendor perspective"
• Result

Research question

The aggregated evidence refers to research question about  which factors have been used to define/compose/describe software productivity in prediction and measurement methods.

Development Methodology affecting Software Productivty

The purpose of this synthesis is to characterize the effect of Bussiness Area on software productivity from the point of view of SE researchers in the context of factors described/identified on productivity prediction and measurement methods.

This new and aggregated evidence shows that Business Area has a weakly negative or indifferent effect on software productivity (belief =56%). Furthermore, the conflict level of evidence (32%) indicates that the result obtained cannot be considered used for purpose of risk evaluation in software development's context. Therefore, new studies  will be necessary to significatively update the findings of this synthesis.