Optimizing Software Development Processes

Abstract

It would appear that developing software programs or services is one of the easiest things in the world to do. The theorist would have us believe that all practitioners need to do is to write the code in specific software language (e.g. functional language) and follow specific processes (e.g. agile) and ideally deploy as a continuously evolving service and you will reach perfection. If you run into problems then that is because your engineers are not good enough and/or you are not following the process correctly. The reality is very different, especially when developing software at scale. This talk will describe why there are no universal development processes that can be applied across all software product and service. While practitioners are well aware of this reality, there is little assistance, based on empirical evidence, to help them either choose a suitable development process for their product or service, or in optimizing the solution they have already chosen. Over the last few years I and other researchers have being looking at how to assist developers in optimizing their process, based on the attributes of the product or services they are developing. In this talk I will describe the current state of our research in this space.