Benefit/Cost-Driven Agile Software Development

This is the eighth volume in the Simula SpringerBriefs series and presents a set of basic techniques for estimating the benefit of IT development projects and portfolios.

The Simula SpringerBriefs on Computing aims to provide introductions to select areas of research in computing. Each volume aims to provide an introduction to, and overview over, research fields that can otherwise be inaccessible. This is the eighth volume in this series.

Benefit/Cost-Driven Agile Software Development: With Benefit Points and Size Points by Jo Erskine Hannay is now available for download. This open access book presents a set of basic techniques for estimating the benefit of IT development projects and portfolios. It also offers methods for monitoring how much of that estimated benefit is being achieved during projects. Readers can then use these benefit estimates together with cost estimates to create a benefit/cost index to help them decide which functionalities to send into construction and in what order. This allows them to focus on constructing the functionality that offers the best value for money at an early stage.

Although benefits management involves a wide range of activities in addition to estimation and monitoring, the techniques in this book provides a clear guide to achieving what has always been the goal of project and portfolio stakeholders: developing systems that produce as much usefulness and value as possible for the money invested. The techniques can also help deal with vicarious motives and obstacles that prevent this happening. The book equips readers to recognize when a project budget should not be spent in full and resources be allocated elsewhere in a portfolio instead. It also provides development managers and upper management with common ground as a basis for making informed decisions.

Open access

Benefit/Cost-Driven Agile Software Development is now available for download. As with all the Simula SpringerBriefs on Computing, this volume is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license and was published by SpringerOpen.

About the author

Jo Erskine Hannay is a chief research scientist at the EDOS Centre at Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering. His research interests include benefits management, benefit and cost estimation, expertise and skill acquisition, the effects of human factors on programming, simulation-based training and machine learning. Hannay received a Ph.D. from the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.