Publisher's Synopsis
[more information to come] This new book addresses the question of how to improve the productivity and quality of software development projects, within the commercial constraints faced by practitioners. Four broad areas of software projects were looked at: tools, production techniques, measurement, and testing. The research lead to the innovation of specific ideas for achieving software quality. The potential of the ideas was studied by working with teams of developers. Within the four broad areas, six approaches are examined: changing the computer language; adopting a methodology; collecting software metrics; automating testing; adapting Japanese manufacturing principles to software projects and extending the Japanese manufacturing ideas to remote projects. The empirical content is based on the data and observations collected from interviews, surveys and participant observation, as appropriate, in respect of each of the six approaches. The study was carried out with a range of software developers and the results compared with the literature. The common strategy was to examine the ideas in a practical context and to analyze what happened. The six investigations provide insights into the complete software life cycle and the tools that can be used. [proposal attached]
