Uncontrollable costs, schedule overruns, and poor end product quality continue to plague the software engineering field. This research investigates software process improvement (SPI) through the application of knowledge management (KM) at the software project level. A pilot study was conducted to investigate what types of obstacles to knowledge flow exist within a software development project, as well as the potential influence on SPI of their mitigation or removal. The KM technique of “knowledge mapping” was used as a research technique to characterize knowledge flow. Results show that such mitigation or removal was acknowledged by project team members as having the potential for lowering project labor cost, improving schedule adherence, and enhancing final product quality.

A pilot study was conducted within a software development domain using "knowledge mapping" (K-mapping) as a research technique to locate and indicate improvements to problematic software project-level knowledge flows (K-flows). The goal of the study is to show that the mitigation or removal of obstacles to project-level K-flow will result in software process improvement (SPI) by lowering project labor cost, improving schedule adherence, and/or enhancing end-product quality. Results show support for the efficacy of the study's K-mapping technique for the identification and management of software project K-flow obstacles. Additionally, the suggested alleviation of such obstacles was acknowledged by project team members as having the potential for a positive effect on SPI.

The objective of this study is to present a body of evidence that will assist software project managers to make informed choices about software development approaches for their projects. In particular, two broadly defined competing approaches, the traditional ldquowaterfallrdquo approach and iterative and incremental development (IID), are compared with regards to development cost and duration, and resulting product quality. The method used for this comparison is a systematic literature review. The small set of studies we located did not demonstrate any identifiable cost, duration, or quality trends, although there was some evidence suggesting the superiority of IID (in particular XP). The results of this review indicate that further empirical studies, both quantitative and qualitative, on this topic need to be undertaken. In order to effectively compare study results, the research community needs to reach a consensus on a set of comparable parameters that best assess cost, duration, and quality.