Process Improvement Experiments in Perspective
Abstract
In the context of European Communities funded programs, several
software companies and research institutions have recently started
collaborations aimed at conducting empirical studies. The industrial
objective is ususally the evaluation of a process improvement in a
``scientific'' way. On the other side, academy is interested in
building knowledge about software engineering practice from such
studies. In this paper empirical studies are considered in
perspective, starting from the experience made during the process
improvement experiment ITALO.
The objective of ITALO was evaluating the benefits coming from test
management automation. In a first phase commercial tools were selected
by following a methodology based on {\em Feature Analysis}. Then, a
controlled experiment was designed to measure the effects of tool
adoption in terms of changed quality and effort. Results confirmed the
experimental hypothesis that an increased defect removal can be
achieved by tool adoption. The associated increased effort is expected
to disappear in the next iterations of tool usage.
Postscript version of the paper.