Applying data mining to software development projects : a case study

Abstract

One of the main challenges that the project managers have during the building process of a software development project (SDP) is to optimise the values of the parameters that measure the viability of the final process. The accomplishment of this task, something that was not easy at the beginning, was helped with the appearance of dynamic models and simulation environments. The application of data mining techniques to the managing of Software Development Projects (SDP) is not an uncommon phenomenon, as in any other productive process that generates information in the way of input data and output variables. In this paper, we present and analyze the results obtained from a tool, developed by the authors, based on a Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) technique. One of the most important contributions of these techniques to the software engineering field is the possibility of improving the management process of an SDP. The purpose is to provide accurate decision rules in order to help the project manager to take decisions during the development.