Economic Output Under the Conditions of Social Freedom in Software Development

Abstract

Software developers organize their work autonomously. Agile development approaches give freedom to developers. However, the discussion about economy often leads to the comparison with manufacturing processes which are tightly organised. If developers spend too much time on inefficient activities, the performance might decrease. The worst example could be breaks. Breaks could be seen as a reason for economic problems by the management. This paper investigates the impact of breaks on the overall performance in software development. The investigations assume that if developers make pauses in a normal manner, this has not a negative impact on the profitability. In practice, the human-centric development process brings together a business process and a social process. The interaction of both processes was simulated. Due to the execution of 1.500 simulations, we obtained information on the economic progression of the development process under the influence of breaks. We determined the impact of breaks on the overall profitability. This investigation contributes to the discussion of freedom in software development. It helps managers to assess if employees who make breaks harm the profitability. This could lead to the implementation of further business constraints.

Efficient Key Performance Indicator Calculation

“…As we are simulating the progression in different models (15), KPIs need to be related to different types of entities. KPIs which are related to progression elements, need to be predefined.…”

“…KPIs of the process model itself, might be related to actors (salary, worked hours, hours of absence) or to vertexes (worked hours, variable costs, number of operations...) or any other object which defines the operational sequence. The simulation bases on actors who act and record what they were carrying out (15). The actors operate in processes which consist of a list of flows (tuple of activities) (13).…”