Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice

This paper describes an approach to balancing uncertainties of context in the very early stages of Enterprise Resource Planning projects. Our findings indicate that project uncertainty can be considered as an asset and not as a roadblock to project success. We also show how project managers can adjust project context factors so that the chances of ERP project success are increased. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We studied 5755 changes of three software systems over three years of development in industry. On the basis of our analysis, we found the following: (1) Profiles of change types for the reused framework and the applications are similar, specifically, perfective changes dominate significantly. (2) Adaptive changes are more frequent and are active longer in JEF and S&A, these systems went through less refactoring than DCF. For DCF we saw that preventive changes were more frequent and were active longer. (3) Designing for reuse seems to lead to a long term payoff in relation to non-reusable software systems. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Software cockpits support the management and controlling of system development projects through measurement. Most of the existing approaches provide a fixed set of project control mechanisms that cannot be sufficiently customized to specific needs. Specula is a systematic approach for defining reusable, customizable control components and generating software cockpits according to different organizational goals and characteristics. This allows for identifying and reducing risks related to introducing cockpits, more efficiency in setting up and adapting controlling mechanisms, and transparent decision-making. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper presents inhibitors to the process of cost estimation found in an explorative interview study. Comparing this and five other studies with similar purpose a lack of results overlap was discovered. Thus, we suggest that in order to understand and improve the practice of cost estimation, practitioners might gain more actionable insight from a company-specific investigation than from the results of a more general one. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.