Title: 2020 Visions of Barry Boehm’s Software Engineering Economics

Session Coordinator: Dan Port

Abstract:

Software Engineering Economics is about making decisions related to software engineering in a business context. The essence of software engineering economics is aligning software technical decisions with the business goals of the organization. This concept was established as a research endeavor circa 1981 by Barry Boehm in a number of articles and the book “Software Engineering Economics” (Prentice Hall; 1st edition (November 1, 1981). In the 2000s, a series of ICSE Workshop on Economics-Driven Software Engineering Research (EDSER) expanded on Boehm’s foundations. EDSER ceased in 2005, but research continued and there has been much development including popular concepts such as technical debt, Value-driven software engineering, Agile/Lean software engineering, and architecture trade-off analysis. Software Engineering Economics as a field of study and area of practice has become incoherent and outdated. What is Software Engineering Economics in today’s world of systems of systems, componentized development, DevOps, supra-agile development, AI/Expert systems and so many other contemporary developments? This session aims to address this issue and take leadership in updating the vision of Software Engineering Economics and rekindling it as a vibrant field of study and area of practice.

Session Goals:

The goals of this session is to update the perspective of Software Engineering Economics to 2020 and lay out a path to re-establishing it as a coherent area of research and practice.

Development of the Session: (How will the session be conducted? How much interaction?)

Pre-ISERN:

• Participants are requested to review the background and recommended reading.

• Email the session coordinator in advance of the session a list of works they believe represent advancements in Software Engineering Economics since 2002. Participants may include their own work. These works will be made available to participants at the session.

Session Agenda:

14:00 - 14:10: Introductions and discussion of agenda and goals of the session

14:10 - 14:40: Review of SWEBOK Software Engineering Economics knowledge and revision discussion

14:40 - 15:00: Workshop collected works and mapping to revised SWEBOK Software Engineering Economics knowledge. Adjust revision of SWEBOK.

15:00 - 15:15: Develop plan to draft Wikipedia entry for Software Engineering Economics

15:15 - 15:30: Plan a collaboration for an article for ICSE, ESEM, or a suitable journal and discuss opportunities for revising Boehm’s Software Engineering Economics book

15:30

What means for interaction will be used or required? * Projector and screen or large monitor * Wifi access

Background and recommended reading:

Foundational Paper:

Boehm, B., Software Engineering Economics, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. SE-10 (1), 198 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-48354-7_5

2002 update:

H. Erdogmus, B. W. Boehm, W. Harrison, D. J. Reifer and K. J. Sullivan, “Software engineering economics: background, current practices, and future directions,” Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering. ICSE 2002, Orlando, FL, USA, 2002, pp. 683-684. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1008028

Foundational book:

Software Engineering Economics Prentice Hall; 1st edition (November 1, 1981) ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0138221227 https://archive.org/details/softwareengineer0000boeh/page/n9/mode/2up

SWEBOK knowledge area:

http://swebokwiki.org/Chapter_12:_Software_Engineering_Economics

Expected Outcomes and Plan for Continuing the Work beyond ISERN: The expected outcome of the session is to establish a working group to * Revise SWEBOK Chapter_12:_Software_Engineering_Economics * Collaborate and publish an article on the evolution of Software Engineering Economics from 2002 to the present * Initiate a revision of Boehm’s Software Engineering Economics book