Software Development Analytics: Experiences and the Way Forward

Software development analytics plays an important role in bridging the gap between purely process-centric software development management and the on-ground realities resulting from the inherent complexities of software development. Lack of high-fidelity data, potential data manipulation by humans, absence of real-time / near real-time analysis and sub-optimal insights design causes issues in governing software development. We have worked with development projects to understand the gaps, and design insights and tools for offering early warnings to different project stakeholders. In this paper, we discuss our approach to designing a insights framework and learning from pilots with industrial software development projects. Going forward our work is influenced by changes in technology and new workforce models. We present them, as they would have a significant impact on the future actionable insights research.