Are the principal components of software complexity data stable across software products?

Abstract

The current software market is not suitable for organizations that place competitive bids, set schedules, or control projects without regard to past performance. Software quality models based upon data collected from past projects can help engineers to estimate costs of future development efforts, and to control ongoing efforts. Application of principal components analysis can improve the stability and predictive quality of software quality models. However, models based upon principal components are only appropriate for application to products having similar principal components. We apply a statistical technique for quantifying the similarity of principal components. We find that distinct but similar products developed by the same organization can share similar principal components, and that distinct products developed by distinct organizations will likely have dissimilar principal components.<>