SYSTEM DYNAMICS AND GOAL-ORIENTED MEASUREMENT: A HYBRID APPROACH

Goal-oriented measurement following the Goal/Question/Metric (GQM) approach is a well-defined and powerful tool in software management and decision-support. This chapter proposes the integration of GQM with a mature software process simulation approach, System Dynamics, in order to further enhance software managers' analytic, explorative, and decision-making capability. The proposed hybrid approach, which we denote “Dynamic GQM”, overcomes limitations that exist if applying GQM and system dynamics in isolation. It offers a new dimension of support to managers and decisionmakers by integrating traditional goal-oriented measurement and static modeling with the newly emerging paradigm of software process simulation and dynamic modeling. The hybrid approach is holistic by nature, i.e. it takes a global perspective on decision making in contrast to the local perspective advocated by traditional GQM. The proposed approach combines individual GQM plans into one consistent model and adds timedynamic behavior on top of it, thus offering a comprehensive view on what is actually happening in software projects.