Study on management of software engineering through statistical analysis and simulation

Surveys on software engineering excellence (SEE) of the Japanese software industry were designed and administrated with the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to measure software engineering capability from the viewpoint of deliverables, project management, quality assurance, process improvement, research and development, human development, and customer contacts. Using the cross-section analysis results, we hypothesized that superior deliverables and business performance to be significantly correlated with the effort expended on human resource development, quality assurance, R&D, and process improvement. Through the panel analysis based on the hypothesis, we found that most SEE factors for a particular year had significant positive influences on the same factors the following year with the similar structure over the different years, although several negative paths were observed, which implies that the effort put into a particular factor did not pay off in the short-term. Future study includes panel analyses with financial data and simulation models.