The Shape of Code

I am sometimes asked which other books are similar to the Empirical Software Engineering book I am working on.

In spirit, the most similar book is “Software Project Dynamics” by Abdel-Hamid and Madnick, based on Abdel-Hamid’s PhD thesis. The thesis/book sets out to create an integrated model of software development projects, using system dynamics (the model can be ‘run’ to produce outputs from inputs, assuming the necessary software is available).

Building a model of the software development process requires figuring out the behavior of all the important factors, and Abdel-Hamid does a thorough job of enumerating the important factors and tracking down the available empirical work (in the 1980s). The system dynamics model, written in Dynamo, appears in an appendix (I have not been able to locate any current implementation).

In the 1980s, I would have agreed with Abdel-Hamid that it was possible to build a reasonably accurate model of software development projects. Thirty years later, I have tracked down a lot more empirical work and know a more about how software projects work. All this has taught me is that I don’t know enough to be able to build a model of software development projects; but I still think it is possible, one day.

There have been other attempts to build models of major aspects of software development projects (all using system dynamics), including Madachy’s PhD and later book “Software Process Dynamics”, and Buettner’s PhD (no book, yet???).

There are other books that include some combination of the words empirical, software and engineering in their title. On the whole, these are collections of edited papers, whose chapters are written by researchers promoting their latest work; there is even one that aims to teach students how to do empirical work.

Dag Sjøberg has done some interesting empirical work and is currently working on an empirical book, this should be worth a look.

“R in Action” by Kabacoff is the closest to the statistical material, but at a more general level. “The R Book” by Crawley is the R book I would recommend, but it is not at all like the material I have written.