THE EFFECTS OF THE BUSINESS MODEL ON OBJECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE-DEVELOPMENT PRODUCTIVITY

Unless the business model that governs software production adjusts to new technology, if is unlikely that an investment in the technology wi ll result in real productivity benefits. Commercial development always takes place in the context of a business model, and in that context a n understanding of how business constraints influence commercial softw are development is imperative. As software markets become more competi tive and business pressures shorten software development cycles, impro ved software development productivity continues to be a major concern in the software industry. Many believe that new software technology su ch as object-oriented development provides a breakthrough solution to this problem. Unfortunately, there is little quantitative evidence for this belief. In this paper we explore the relationship between the bu siness model and the productivity that a software development methodol ogy can achieve in a commercial environment under that model. We first examine empirical data from several commercial products developed usi ng object-oriented methods. The results indicate that object-oriented development may not perform any better than ''procedural'' development in environments that lack incentives for early completion of intermed iate project tasks. We then model and simulate the impact of the softw are task-completion incentives and deadlines on the productivity that might be expected from a technology with highperformance potential. We show how and why some common business practices might lower project p roductivity and project completion probability. We also discuss to wha t extent poor software process control and (im)maturity of the technol ogy compounds the problem.