| The value of any investment in software development
technology lies in the increase in effectiveness of
developers using the new technology. That effectiveness
translates to productivity, but not just productivity in
writing new code. Most projects are not ‘green
field’ projects, they are add-ons, maintenance or
enhancements and so improved productivity must especially
apply to these, the majority of projects. Conversely, if
a software component is of poor quality, maintenance
effort will be increased and productivity in projects
managing and building on that component will be impeded,
no matter how swift the initial implementation was. Hence
the place to look for sustainable productivity is in the
mainstream maintenance and enhancement projects. Of course in the competitive world of software development tools most effort is placed in the easier to demonstrate and initially more seductive initial development. Little effort is expended in measuring the full lifecycle effectiveness of such tools. This report summarises a study which addresses exactly this problem. It was undertaken as a master’s degree research project at the Technical University of Munich. It was undertaken independently of Oracle Corporation or any other interested party. An overview of the results is presented below and shows consistently high levels of productivity achieved by Oracle Designer/2000 users. Productivity at levels much higher than tools benchmarked in other studies. |