Companies Approaches in Software Release Planning - Based on Multiple Case Studies

摘要

In Incremental software development, evaluation of software product is usually determined by user's satisfaction. New features that originate from stakeholders lead to a new software release. Release planning involves decision making activities about features assignment. These complex decisions totally depend on many criteria such as cost, time and available resources.. Nowadays, there are several approaches for release planning, which are used by software companies to generate new releases. However, companies are still unable to determine which exact methods are more exactly suitable for their release planning. This research project investigates the methods companies use to plan for new software releases and the approach they use. In this work, the current approaches that are used in the software industry have been categorized in order to select the most appropriate approach. In order to validate our approach, multiple case studies were conducted. The data were collected using questionnaires. Direct interviewers have been also conducted with representatives of seven software companies with different level of software development experiences. Results showed that experienced companies prefer to improve their existing software products rather than creating a new plan. The reason for this was the invaluable existing trust among clients or customers in their products. By doing so companies intend to improve their condition by increasing the reliability of the software produced. These companies generally prefer to use systematic approaches, when they came to decide for development process. In contrast because of lack of experience, newer companies prefer to rely more on human experience for their releases. Newer companies therefore are not able to foresee the future of the software market. These companies do not just rely on systematic approaches for their development, but they rather use the best available plans to produce good quality product. We hope the results of this research project would benefit companies to overcome the problem of choosing a suitable and optimized release plans and help customising it for their needs.