Evaluation of software development processes using development environment logs

Abstract

Existing approaches for evaluation of software development processes use employee feedback as a main source of data. We were interested in assessing the possible benefit of using event logs as an additional source of data in software development process evaluation. In this master's thesis, we reviewed existing approaches that take into account the sociological, technical and economic aspects of business processes. We have developed a new approach which in addition to employee feedback introduces the use of quantitative event log data generated by development environment tools to improve the accuracy of evaluation. We tested our approach in three companies using multiple case study method. Similarity of cases allowed us to verify the replication of the results. The management of all three companies confirmed that our approach provided useful information about the efficiency and acceptance of development processes. We confirmed that the use of event log data in evaluation is useful because it helps reduce possible deviation of developers' estimates from actual situation