Towards better software projects and contracts: commitment specifications in software development projects

Any software development project requires commitments from its participants. These commitments can include money, resources, deadlines, and specified functionality for the end product. The authors have developed a framework and a set of guidelines to support the specification of such commitments. They have evaluated the framework empirically in a series of case studies. The studies indicated that the framework addresses commitment specification issues that are normally not covered in project contracts and that the specification framework was considered beneficial by project representatives