A career spent wading through industry's empirical ooze (invited talk)

Abstract

Sometimes analyzing industrial software data seems like draining a swamp. This keynote describes challenges faced while wading through 5 layers of empirical ooze over 36+ years in the software industry. The first layer seeped from formal experiments. The second layer spilled from a global corporate repository of project benchmark data. The third layer leaked from verbalizations by designers and design teams. The fourth layer was emitted by case studies of process improvement. The fifth layer dripped from structural quality data on large IT systems. Five lessons for separating the ooze from the data will be recounted.