A Programmer Performance Model and its Measure-ment Environment
健一 松本 · OUKA (Osaka University Knowledge Archive) (Osaka University) · 1990
This thesis proposes a programmer performance model in order to evaluate the activities of a programmer in a quantitative and objective way.This model is then extended to evaluate the activities of the programmers of a team.Analysis of experimental evaluations shows the validity and the effectiveness of the proposed model.In addition, this thesis describes a measurement environment called GINGER which automatically collects and analyzes the data from the activities of programmers during software development and shows the obtained and analyzed data to the programmers as feedback information.By providing these features, GINGER aims to control the software development project in a meaningful and objective way.The programmer performance model and the team performance model are defined based on a novel concept of error life span.The life span of an error is defined as the time duration from when the error manifests itself in the software to when the error is removed from the software.Results of experimental evaluations show that the programmer performance model has a high correlation with the "aptitude" of a student programmer.Additionally, the team performance model, which is defined by regarding a team as a virtual programmer, turns out to have a high correlation with the time a team spends debugging.The proposed GINGER environment evaluates the activities of programmers by concentrating its attention on programmer productivity.i Chapter 5 describes the major functions of project management during software development.The chapter stresses that "controlling" is the most important of these functions.Chapter 6 presents the system organization and functions of GINGER.GINGER supports collecting and analyzing data during software development.It supports information feedback to improve programmer productivity with respect to measurement-based control of the software development project.The first prototype system of GINGER is described.Chapter 7 shows some experimental results of the prototype system.Results of experiments show that the prototype system provides the primitive functions needed to measure and control the software development process and product as well as to evaluate programmer productivity.Chapter 8 presents a summary of the ideas discussed in the thesis and draws some conclusions.Finally, it summarizes future research work and describes key points for designing future measurement environments.iii