TOOL-BASED SOFTWARE PROJECT CONTROL

Developing software and systems in a way that entails plannable project execution and predictable product quality requires the use of quantitative data for project con-trol. In the context of software development, few techniques exist for supporting on-line monitoring, interpretation, and visualization of project data. This is caused par-ticularly by the often insufficient use of such engineering principles as experience-based planning and plan-based execution in the software development domain. How-ever, effective software project control requires integrated tool support for capturing, managing, analyzing, and storing data. In addition, advanced control approaches aim at providing purpose- and role-oriented information to all involved parties (e.g., pro-ject manager, quality assurer) during the execution of a project. This chapter intro-duces the concept of a so-called Software Project Control Center (SPCC), sketches a control-oriented software development model, and gives a representative overview of existing tool-based software control approaches from academia and practice. Finally, the different approaches are classified and compared with respect to a characteriza-tion schema that reflects important requirements from the viewpoint of practitioners