Value Based Software Engineering

The IT community has always struggled with questions concerning the value of an organization’s investment in software and hardware. It is the goal of value-based software engineering (VBSE) to develop models and measures of value which are of use for managers, developers and users as they make tradeoff decisions between, for example, quality and cost or functionality and schedule – such decisions must be economically feasible and comprehensible to the stakeholders with differing value perspectives. VBSE has its roots in work on software engineering economics, pioneered by Barry Boehm in the early 1980s. However, the emergence of a wider scope that defines VBSE is more recent. VBSE extends the merely technical ISO software engineering definition with elements not only from economics, but also from cognitive science, finance, management science, behavioral sciences, and decision sciences, giving rise to a truly multi-disciplinary framework. Biffl and his co-editors invited leading researchers and structured their contributions into three parts, following an introduction into the area by Boehm himself. They first detail the foundations of VBSE, followed by a presentation of state-of-the-art methods and techniques. The third part demonstrates the benefits of VBSE through concrete examples and case studies. This book deviates from the more anecdotal style of many management-oriented software engineering books and so appeals particularly to all readers who are interested in solid foundations for high-level aspects of software engineering decision making, i.e., to product or project managers driven by economics and to software engineering researchers and students.

This is the most authoritative archive of Barry Boehm's contributions to software engineering. Featuring 42 reprinted articles, along with an introduction and chapter summaries to provide context, it serves as a "how-to" reference manual for software engineering best practices. It provides convenient access to Boehm's landmark work on product development and management processes. The book concludes with an insightful look to the future by Dr. Boehm.

Today, software engineers need to know not only how to program effectively but also how to develop proper engineering practices to make their codebase sustainable and healthy. This book emphasizes this difference between programming and software engineering. How can software engineers manage a living codebase that evolves and responds to changing requirements and demands over the length of its life? Based on their experience at Google, software engineers Titus Winters and Hyrum Wright, along with technical writer Tom Manshreck, present a candid and insightful look at how some of the world’s leading practitioners construct and maintain software. This book covers Google’s unique engineering culture, processes, and tools and how these aspects contribute to the effectiveness of an engineering organization. You’ll explore three fundamental principles that software organizations should keep in mind when designing, architecting, writing, and maintaining code: How time affects the sustainability of software and how to make your code resilient over time How scale affects the viability of software practices within an engineering organization What trade-offs a typical engineer needs to make when evaluating design and development decisions

Explaining how ubiquitous computing is rapidly changing our private and professional lives, Ethical IT Innovation: A Value-Based System Design Approach stands at the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and management and integrates theories and frameworks from all three domains.The book explores the latest thinking on computer ethics, inc

In business, driving value is a key strategy and typically starts at the top of an organization. In today’s digital age, driving software value is also an important, and often overlooked, key strategy. Executives, and the corporate board, need to expect the highest level of business value from the software the organization is developing, buying, and selling. In today’s digital transformation marketplace, it is imperative that organizations start driving business value from software development initiatives. For many years, the cost of software development challenged organizations with questions such as: How do we allocate software development costs? Should these costs be considered an overhead expense? Are we getting the most value possible for our investment? A fundamental problem has been built into these questions – the focus on cost. In almost every other part of the organization, maximizing profit or, in the case of a not-for-profit, maximizing the funds available, provides a clear focus with metrics to determine success or failure. In theory, simply aligning software spending with the maximizing profit goals should be sufficient to avoid any questions about value for money. Unfortunately, this alignment hasn’t turned out to be so simple, and the questions persist, particularly at the strategic or application portfolio level. In this book, Michael D.S. Harris describes how a software business value culture—one where all stakeholders, including technology and business—have a clear understanding of the goals and expected business value from software development. The book shows readers how they can transform software development from a cost or profit center to a business value center. Only a culture of software as a value center enables an organization to constantly maximize business value flow through software development. If your organization is starting to ask how it can change software from a cost-center to a value-center, this book is for you.

- Opens the black box of methodologies and demonstrates that software development is fundamentally a value creation process - Covers new and radical approaches to software development that respond to business demands for shorter investment periods and increased agility - Provides software engineers tools for understanding enterprise-level value creation and managing financial objectives

Like other sciences and engineering disciplines, software engineering requires a cycle of model building, experimentation, and learning. Experiments are valuable tools for all software engineers who are involved in evaluating and choosing between different methods, techniques, languages and tools. The purpose of Experimentation in Software Engineering is to introduce students, teachers, researchers, and practitioners to empirical studies in software engineering, using controlled experiments. The introduction to experimentation is provided through a process perspective, and the focus is on the steps that we have to go through to perform an experiment. The book is divided into three parts. The first part provides a background of theories and methods used in experimentation. Part II then devotes one chapter to each of the five experiment steps: scoping, planning, execution, analysis, and result presentation. Part III completes the presentation with two examples. Assignments and statistical material are provided in appendixes. Overall the book provides indispensable information regarding empirical studies in particular for experiments, but also for case studies, systematic literature reviews, and surveys. It is a revision of the authors’ book, which was published in 2000. In addition, substantial new material, e.g. concerning systematic literature reviews and case study research, is introduced. The book is self-contained and it is suitable as a course book in undergraduate or graduate studies where the need for empirical studies in software engineering is stressed. Exercises and assignments are included to combine the more theoretical material with practical aspects. Researchers will also benefit from the book, learning more about how to conduct empirical studies, and likewise practitioners may use it as a “cookbook” when evaluating new methods or techniques before implementing them in their organization.

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use