Analysis of New Technologies

Capers Jones

The software industry is extremely active in developing new methodologies and technologies. Many of these are effective, but some are not. This presentation by Capers Jones uses a standard analytic approach for evaluating the effectiveness of new and emerging technologies on software development productivity, software maintenance productivity, and software quality. The current version of this presentation uses recent data to analyze Agile development, extreme programming, the ITIL library, SCRUM sessions, Watts Humphrey's Team Software Process (TSP) and Personal Software Process (PSP), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Six-Sigma for Software.

Capers Jones is Chief Scientist Emeritus of Software Productivity Research (SPR). Mr. Jones is the designer of several software cost and quality estimation tools including SPQR/20™, the first commercial software estimating tool to use function points as the basis for sizing source code and other deliverables such as specifications and user documents. He is also an international consultant on software management topics, a speaker, a seminar leader, and a prolific author. As an author, Mr. Jones has written 14 books including his best seller "Applied Software Measurement: Assuring Productivity and Quality." His most recent book is "Estimating Software Costs."

Victor R. Basili is former Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland and Chief Scientist at the Fraunhofer Center-Maryland, where he was founding director and was also one of the Founders and Principals in the NASA Goddard Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL). He has worked on measuring, evaluating, and improving the software development process and product and developed methods such as the Goal Question Metric Approach (GQM), the Quality Improvement paradigm (QIP), and the Experience Factory organization (EF) to help bring a sense of order to the ad-hoc development so prevalent in the software engineering field. Dr. Basili has developed, tailored, evaluated and evolved these techniques for many organizations and government agencies, including AT&T Bell Labs, Boeing, Coopers and Lybrand, Daimler, DoD, Ericsson, FAA, Fujitsu, GE, GTE, Hughes, IBM, Lucent, MCC, Motorola, Mutsuhito Panasonic, NASA, NEC, Nokia, Ricoh, and Sogei.

Dr. Robert Charette is the President of the ITABHI Corporation, an international high technology company involved in enterprise and program risk management consulting. He is the author of over 80 articles on software, systems, and business management in addition to the following books: "Software Engineering Environments: Concepts and Technology" (1986), "Software Engineering Risk Analysis & Management" (1989), "Applications Strategies for Risk Analysis" (1990), "Introduction to the Management of Risk" (1994, "A Unified Methodology for Systems Development" (1987) and "Decision Empowerment: A Parent's Guide to Raising Good Decision Makers' (2007). Several new books on managing enterprise risk are in progress.

Bob Lawhorn has over 40 years of experience in software development, measurement, and project estimation. He spent his first twenty years at Bethlehem Steel working on applications related to steel, mining, and ship building and his next twenty years at CAI, where he invented CAI's application development methodologies and fixed price estimating matrices. Bob is currently CTO of CAI where he spends most of time consulting with companies and government agencies on how to implement application development best practices within their own organizations.

Clay Nickels has twenty years of experience in the Information Technology industry and specializes in the management, definition, and implementation of application support processes. He has managed development and maintenance activities associated with the support of business applications in the health insurance, manufacturing, and the student loan sectors. Mr. Nickels’ consulting engagements have included numerous clients in the health insurance, government, banking, and retail industries.

Mr. Nickels has significant experience in assessing, evaluating, and enhancing enterprise-wide Information Technology management processes. He is a principal developer of Computer Aid’s Managed Maintenance Process and Consulting Practice and is currently involved in evaluating the ISO-20000 compliance of Computer Aid’s Managed Maintenance practices.