GQM-based improvement of embedded, real-time software development practices

The paper reports on the experiences from an ESSI project, called PITA, carried out at INTRACOM's department developing software for digital telephony applications. PITA introduced the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) approach via the AMI method and tool, focusing on a typical project as a baseline. Expected benefits from PITA include: reduction of software development cost, shortening of the time-to-market for software products and increased product reliability at customer's site. The paper presents the rationale of the experiment, a brief account of the GQM method and the AMI approach, the objectives and the organisation of the experiment, its relation to other ongoing improvement efforts, the results and conclusions from the experiment, lessons learned and plans for future activities.