SERG Lunch: The What, Who and How of Predictable Software Delivery

In today’s rapidly changing world, the ability to be agile as well as predictable is essential to modern software development companies. To become more predictable in software deliveries, it is essential to have knowledge of previous similar projects that have been developed by the company, and also to understand the factors that may affect effort estimation. While software effort estimation is an active research are, there are only a few studies that identify factors that affect the predictability of software other than estimation model and process. To provide a better understanding of the social and technical factors that influence the delivery of new software, we performed a case study at ING on ‘the what, who and how of predictable software delivery’. What factors affect the predictability of a software delivery? Who (in terms of role and experience) are more accurate at estimating software effort? How can software development teams improve their delivery predictability? This lunch talk will cover our work on software delivery predictability at ING.