Effect of Model Based Software Development on Productivity of Enhancement Tasks -- An Industrial Study

Model based software development promises to increase productivity by generating executable code automatically from design/models thereby eliminating the manual coding phase. Although new software development projects have yielded high productivity using model based development, its effect on productivity of maintenance projects involving enhancement tasks are not well researched. In this paper we study the impact of model based development on productivity and quality of maintenance tasks. In our study, we observed 173 enhancement tasks done using model based software development, and 156 enhancement tasks using traditional software development, in six live projects over one year at Robert Bosch Engineering & Business Solutions Ltd., a CMMi level 5 software company. For each of these tasks, we collected data on size, effort taken to complete the task, and rework effort to fix any bugs. We found that the productivity of enhancement tasks executed using model based software development was higher by over 10% as compared to traditional software development. No statistically significant difference was found between the model based and traditional software development for the rework effort suggesting that there is no adverse effect on quality.