A family of empirical studies to compare informal and optimization-based planning of software releases

Replication of experiments, or performing a series of related studies, aims at attaining a higher level of validity of results. This paper reports on a series of empirical studies devoted to comparing informal release planning with two variants of optimization-based release planning.Two research questions were studied: How does optimization-based release planning compare with informal planning in terms of (i) time to generate release plans, and the feasibility and quality of those plans, and (ii) understanding and confidence of generated solutions and trust in the release planning process.For the family of empirical studies, the paper presents two types of results related to (i) the two research questions to compare the release planning techniques, and (ii) the evolution and lessons learned while conducting the studies.