The effects of time pressure on quality in software development: An agency model

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Austin, RD
• 署名单位: Harvard University
• 刊物名称: INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7047
• DOI: 10.1287/isre.12.2.195.9699
• 发表日期: 2001
• 页码: 195-207
• 关键词: costs

摘要

An agency framework is used to model the behavior of software developers as they weigh concerns about product quality against concerns about missing individual task deadlines. Developers who care about quality but fear the career impact of missed deadlines may take shortcuts. Managers sometimes attempt to reduce this risk via their deadline-setting policies; a common method involves adding slack to best estimates when setting deadlines to partially alleviate the time pressures believed to encourage shortcut-taking. This paper derives a formal relationship between deadline-setting policies and software product quality. It shows that: (1) adding slack does not always preserve quality, thus, systematically adding slack is an incomplete policy for minimizing costs; (2) costs can be minimized by adopting policies that permit estimates of completion dates and deadlines that are different and; (3) contrary to casual intuition, shortcut-taking can be eliminated by setting deadlines aggressively, thereby maintaining or even increasing the time pressures under which developers work.