A spiral process model for case studies on software quality monitoring—method and metrics

Abstract

AbstractThis article presents a spiral process model for an iterative case study on quality monitoring, conducted in an industrial environment. In a highly iterative project, everything seems to happen at the same time: analysis, design and testing. We propose a spiral process model for case studies, and present a study conducted according to the proposed process. In the study, metrics collected from three software development projects are analysed to investigate which characteristics are stable across projects and feature groups of the product. The contribution of the article is multi‐fold, detailing the case study methodology used with its sub‐goals and procedures. Furthermore, the article presents the metrics collected and the results as such from the case study, which gives insights into a complex development environment and the trends of the retrieved data. The analysed data serve as feedback to the project staff to facilitate identification of software process improvement. The data have also been used for defect prediction. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.