Impacts of process audit review and control efforts on software project outcomes
This study examines the potential of using stage-wise process audit review and control (ARC) efforts in estimating overall effort and defects in a software project. Using archival data from 49 software projects that were based on the waterfall methodology, and obtained from a CMMI level 5 organisation, the authors found that higher ARC efforts at the requirement and build phases of a project were associated with an increase in overall project effort. Further, higher ARC efforts at the design and build phases were correlated with an increase in the number of defects delivered to the client at the end of the project. The predictive ability of the authors’ effort models was very high, with mean errors in the range of 3–4% of the overall project effort. They found that the mean ARC effort in their sample was 0.15 h/FP for the requirements stage, 0.31 h/FP for the design stage and 0.67 h/FP for the build stage. A project where the ARC effort for any of the three stages exceeded the respective benchmark, could be a candidate for deeper inspection to prevent excess effort or defects. Organisations can use their own data to develop similar benchmarks for their software project portfolios.
