Department of IT Management
The department conducts research on software development methods, human judgment and decision making in software development contexts, benefits management, cost estimation, risk and uncertainty management, use of contracts and models for user involvements. The main research approach is empirical, including controlled experiments, observational studies, case studies and surveys.
The department’s main goal is to discover important relationships and connections related to the management of software development work, and use this to contribute to substantial improvement in software development processes and products. For this purpose, we work in close collaboration with industry partners in most of our research. We emphasize the transfer of new and useful knowledge to the industry by publishing and presenting not only in academic venues, but also at industry venues.
The IT Management Department also runs Hovedstadsområdets nettverk for IT-styring og ledelse (HIT-Nettverket), which is a network with the goal of increasing competance through sharing experiences in IT management. The network consist of research institutes, IT companies, consultant companies, public stakeholders and clients with an interest in IT management. The themes includes focuses both in the client and the supplier perspective, in addition to strategic, administrative and project related challenges. Read more about HIT here.
People at Department of IT Management
Who we are?
Simula Metropolitan employees are researchers, postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, engineers and administrative people. We are from all over the world, ranging from newly educated to experienced researchers, all working on making research in digital engineering at the highest international level possible.
Publications at Department of IT Management
An empirically evaluated checklist for surveys in software engineering
Information and Software Technology 119 (2020): 106240.Status: Published
An empirically evaluated checklist for surveys in software engineering
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Journal | Information and Software Technology |
| Volume | 119 |
| Pagination | 106240 |
| Date Published | Jan-03-2020 |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| ISSN | 09505849 |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2019.106240 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.infsof.2019.106240 |
Relations Between Effort Estimates, Skill Indicators, and Measured Programming Skill
Transactions on Software Engineering (2019).Status: Submitted
Relations Between Effort Estimates, Skill Indicators, and Measured Programming Skill
There are large skill differences among software developers, and clients and managers will benefit from being able to identify those with better skill. This study examines the relations between low effort estimates, and other commonly used skill indicators, and measured programming skill. One hundred and four professional software developers were recruited. After skill-related information was collected, they were asked to estimate the effort for four larger and five smaller programming tasks. Finally, they completed a programming skill test. The lowest and most over-optimistic effort estimates for the larger tasks were given by those with the lowest programming skill, which is in accordance with the well-known Dunning-Kruger effect. For the smaller tasks, however, those with the lowest programming skill had the highest and most over-pessimistic estimates. The other programming skill indicators, such as length of experience, company assessed skill and self-assessed skill, were only moderately correlated with measured skill and not particularly useful in guiding developer skill identification. A practical implication is that for larger and more complex tasks, the use of low effort estimates and commonly used skill indicators as selection criteria leads to a substantial risk of selecting among the least skilled developers.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Journal | Transactions on Software Engineering |
| Publisher | IEEE |
Sequence effects in the estimation of software development effort
Journal of Systems and Software (2019).Status: Accepted
Sequence effects in the estimation of software development effort
Currently, little is known about how much the sequence in which software development tasks or projects are estimated affects judgment-based effort estimates. To gain more knowledge, we examined estimation sequence effects in two experiments. In the first experiment, 362 software professionals estimated the effort of three large tasks of similar sizes, whereas in the second experiment 104 software professionals estimated the effort of four large and five small tasks. The sequence of the tasks was randomised in both experiments. The first experiment, with tasks of similar size, showed a mean increase of 10% from the first to the second and a 3% increase from the second to the third estimate. The second experiment showed that estimating a larger task after a smaller one led to a mean decrease in the estimate of 24%, and that estimating a smaller task after a larger one led to a mean increase of 25%. There was no statistically significant reduction in the sequence effect with higher competence. We conclude that more awareness about how the estimation sequence affects the estimates may reduce potentially harmful estimation biases. In particular, it may reduce the likelihood of a bias towards too low effort estimates.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Journal | Journal of Systems and Software |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
Experiences of studying Attention through EEG in the Context of Review Tasks
In the Evaluation and AssessmentProceedings of the Evaluation and Assessment on Software Engineering - EASE '19. Copenhagen, DenmarkNew York, New York, USA: ACM Press, 2019.Status: Published
Experiences of studying Attention through EEG in the Context of Review Tasks
Context: Electroencephalograms (EEG) have been used in a few cases in the context of software engineering (SE). EEGs allow capturing emotions and cognitive functioning. Such human factors have already shown to be important to understand software engineering tasks. Therefore, it is essential to gain experience in the community to utilize EEG as a research tool. Objective: To report experiences of using EEG in the context of a software engineering education (review of master theses proposals). We provide our reflections and lessons learned of (1) how to plan an EEG study, (2) how to conduct and execute (e.g., tools), (3) how to analyze. Method: We carried out an experiment using an EEG headset to measure the participants' attention rate. The experiment task includes reviewing three master thesis project plans. Results: We describe how we evolved our understanding of experimentation practices to collect and analyze psychological and cognitive data. We also provide a set of lessons learned regarding the application of EEG technology for research. Conclusions: We believe that that EEG could benefit software engineering research to collect cognitive information under certain conditions. The lessons learned reported here should be used as inputs for future experiments in software engineering, where human aspects are of interest.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management, Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering |
| Publication Type | Proceedings, refereed |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Conference Name | the Evaluation and AssessmentProceedings of the Evaluation and Assessment on Software Engineering - EASE '19 |
| Publisher | ACM Press |
| Place Published | Copenhagen, DenmarkNew York, New York, USA |
| ISBN Number | 9781450371452 |
| Keywords | attention, experiment, human subjects, lectroencephalogram |
| URL | http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3319008http://dl.acm.org/citation.cf... |
| DOI | 10.1145/331900810.1145/3319008.3319357 |
Evaluating Probabilistic Software Development Effort Estimates Maximizing Informativeness Subject to Calibration
Information and Software Technology (2019).Status: Accepted
Evaluating Probabilistic Software Development Effort Estimates Maximizing Informativeness Subject to Calibration
Context: Probabilistic effort estimates inform about the uncertainty and may give useful input to plans, budgets and investment analyses. Objective & Method: This paper introduces, motivates and illustrates two principles on how to evaluate the accuracy and other performance criteria of probabilistic effort estimates in software development contexts. Results: The first principle emphasizes a consistency between the estimation error measure and the loss function of the chosen type of probabilistic single point effort estimates. The second principle points at the importance of not just measuring calibration, but also informativeness of estimated prediction intervals and distributions. The relevance of the evaluation principles is illustrated by a performance evaluation of estimates from twenty-eight software professionals using two different uncertainty assessment methods to estimate the effort of the same thirty software maintenance tasks.
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Journal | Information and Software Technology |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
Alltid smidig når du går! Men hva med oppstartsfasen og forretningssiden?
In Computerworld (Norge). IDG, 2018.Status: Published
Alltid smidig når du går! Men hva med oppstartsfasen og forretningssiden?
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Public outreach |
| Year of Publication | 2018 |
| Secondary Title | Computerworld (Norge) |
| Publisher | IDG |
De som vet lite vet også lite om hvor lite de vet
In Computerworld (Norge). IDG, 2018.Status: Published
De som vet lite vet også lite om hvor lite de vet
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Public outreach |
| Year of Publication | 2018 |
| Secondary Title | Computerworld (Norge) |
| Publisher | IDG |
Hvordan velge å velge - og litt om duer
In Computerworld (Norge). IDG, 2018.Status: Published
Hvordan velge å velge - og litt om duer
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Public outreach |
| Year of Publication | 2018 |
| Secondary Title | Computerworld (Norge) |
| Publisher | IDG |
Sannheten om uærlighet
In Computerworld (Norge). IDG, 2018.Status: Published
Sannheten om uærlighet
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Public outreach |
| Year of Publication | 2018 |
| Secondary Title | Computerworld (Norge) |
| Publisher | IDG |
Digitalisering = produktivitetsvekst?
In Computerworld (Norge). IDG, 2018.Status: Published
Digitalisering = produktivitetsvekst?
| Afilliation | Software Engineering |
| Project(s) | Department of IT Management |
| Publication Type | Public outreach |
| Year of Publication | 2018 |
| Secondary Title | Computerworld (Norge) |
| Publisher | IDG |