Bottleneck Identification in Software Development Processes: A Proposal Based on the Principles of the Theory of Constraints

This document describes the proposal for a doctoral thesis which aims to identify the potential bottlenecks and constraints in the software development process in a learning environment. The research method is based on the empirical observation of the real activities carried out by groups of students engaged in the laboratory project, part of the assignments of a Software Engineering undergraduate course. In order to standardize the software development activities we adopted the Unified Process (UP), with some modifications and adjustments aligned with to our research proposal, which also was also used to define the set of artifacts produced in each phase. The principles of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) were used to model the problem and consequently identify the bottlenecks in software process development. Currently this work is in the early experimental stage, with the first of the experiments finalized and a second one, aiming to obtain more detailed data is under way. Once completed this step, we can analyze the results and validate or refute some hypotheses and perhaps answer the question: "what are the bottlenecks in the software production process"?