Qualitative vs. quantitative software process simulation modeling: Conversion and comparison

Software Process Simulation Modeling (SPSM) research has increased in the past two decades. However, most of these models are quantitative, which require detailed un-derstanding and accurate measurement. As the continu-ous work to our previous studies in qualitative modeling of software process, this paper aims to investigate the struc-ture equivalence and model conversion between quantita-tive and qualitative process modeling, and to compare the characteristics and performance of these two approaches by modeling and simulating a software evolution process. Fol-lowing the model conversion scheme, the reference quanti-tative (SD) model and the corresponding qualitative model become comparable. The results present their different ca-pabilities and interesting perspectives, and further the po-tential use of qualitative modeling in software process re-search