AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT VISUALIZATION FOR PROCUREMENT BY IN-PROCESS MEASUREMENT DURING INTEGRATION AND TESTING

Abstract

This study describes a new method of development visualization along with empirical evidence of its usefulness. Typically, development activities such as program design, programming, and unit testing are not disclosed to the procurement organization (project owner). However, during integration and testing, various issues require collaboration between the procurement organization and developers. When this occurs, it is important to make the development process visible. Recent reports indicate the usefulness for project management of various in-process project measurements which allow visualization of the formerly invisible software project progress [1–6]. Based on this background, the authors investigated a case study where in-process measurement during the integration and test phase helped to make development issues visible. In this study, data obtained from the integration and testing phase were compared to a development process model. This model was based on the author's experience, and provided a vivid picture of the development activity. By applying in-process measurements in collaboration during the integration test phase, the development activity was clearly visualized, and the procurement organization understood problems.