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Software Engineering

Software Economics

The NRC Institute for Information Technology’s (NRC-IIT) research in software economics addresses the application of economic criteria at all levels of decision-making in software development.

The goal of the research is to study and enhance existing evaluation techniques and develop new ones to improve the effectiveness of decision-making processes in software development. The techniques are based on cost-benefit tradeoffs, and both standard and emerging models of value generation. Begun in 1999, NRC-IIT’s research in software engineering economics is ongoing.

The field of software economics views software development as a value-generating activity. It addresses a wide spectrum of decisions, managerial as well as technical, covering all phases of software development. Using financial, statistical, and decision-theoretic approaches, software economics research at NRC-IIT focuses on:

business case analysis
project evaluation
process selection
assessment of new technologies

NRC-IIT’s research also explores the strong connection between software economics and software quality; that is:

How much should projects invest in quality?
How can quality data and measurement programs help in evaluating future projects?
How do software processes impact economics?

Opportunities

NRC-IIT is actively seeking collaborators to build industrial case studies and jointly explore the application and enhancement of the techniques that have been developed, especially in the following areas:
- Application of real options analysis to software development investments
- Economic evaluation of agile and iterative software development, Extreme Programming in particular

Anyone interested in collaborating in this project is asked to contact the research contact listed below.

In addition, the research results stemming from the study of the following issues can be transferred to other organizations:
- Evaluation of new software technologies
- Evaluation of reuse, prototyping, and infrastructure projects
- Analysis of agile software development practices
- Role of project tracking in value assessment
- Analysis of COTS-based software development

Please contact the Business Development Officer listed below to discuss the variety of ways in which these research results can be transferred to you.

Related NRC-IIT Publications

Research Contact

Dr. Hakan Erdogmus
Research Officer
Software Engineering
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 241A
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 991-1018
Fax: +1 (613) 952-7151
E-mail: Hakan.Erdogmus@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

Business Contact

Dr. George Forester
Business Development Officer
Business Development Office, NCR
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 203
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 993-3478
Fax: +1 (613) 952-0074
E-mail: George.Forester@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca