A Retrospective Study of Software Analytics Projects: In-Depth Interviews with Practitioners

Software analytics guide practitioners in decision making throughout the software development process. In this context, prediction models help managers efficiently organize their resources and identify problems by analyzing patterns on existing project data in an intelligent and meaningful manner. Over the past decade, the authors have worked with software organizations to build metric repositories and predictive models that address process-, product-, and people-related issues in practice. This article shares their experience over the years, reflecting the expectations and outcomes both from practitioner and researcher viewpoints.