A model for estimating schedule acceleration in agile software development projects

2015-04-16This research assesses the effect of product, project, process, people and risk factors on schedule for software development projects that employ agile methods. Prior research identified these factors as being significant within lean/agile organizations with a history of rapid‐response to new product development needs. This work integrates these factors into CORADMO, the Constructive Rapid Application Development Model, an offshoot of the COCOMO family of effort and schedule estimation models. ❧ CORADMO is based on a system dynamics model of the agile development process, which simulates the flow of development tasks and change items through the process. The five major factors are elaborated into twelve sub‐factors, most having a second‐, third‐ or higher‐order effect on schedule. Each of the factors and sub‐factors is rated along a six‐element Likert scale, which determines a set of weighing multipliers derived from COCOMO, COSYSMO, and other models. These multipliers are applied to the system dynamics model elements that affect task production, change rates, defect insertion, refactoring, and other processes, and the schedule effects assessed. ❧ The results of this modeling show very good ability to predict the schedule outcomes of agile projects. The research evaluates the dynamic model against twelve commercial projects, which show from 2% schedule overrun to 56% underrun, and that implement a variety of product types using diverse languages. The twelve factors were rated for each project based on information the projects provided, and the simulated schedule results compared with the actual schedules realized. Although wide‐range validation is limited due to the availability of test data, the CORADMO model is able to predict accurately the actual schedule outcomes of these commercial projects