Talking about the Past - The Role of Adult Talk Timing on Children's Recall of Past Events. (Paperback)

In the software industry, companies have been known to employ ad-hoc processes or organizational standards to select a software development life cycle. The selection of an inappropriate life cycle can result in a project that does not satisfy customer needs, is delivered late or has exceeded the initial budget assigned to the project. In order to mitigate the risks in making an inappropriate selection much research has been conducted since the 1980s to quantitatively and systematically determine which life cycle and/or software tools are appropriate for a particular project. Studies in process tailoring have produced frameworks that aid in adjusting or tailoring a currently used life cycle to a particular project's goals and environment. Although several process selection models have been proposed as a result of these studies, most are designed for a particular point of view---project characteristics, risk factors, requirements stability, delivery schedules, etc. In this thesis, we propose a Unified Process Selection Model (UPSM) that encompasses many of the viewpoints considered in past research and applies them to modern software life cycles. The purpose of UPSM is to assist project managers in selecting an appropriate software life cycle by looking at the project from different angles before making a decision. Empirical data was collected from a range of real project teams working in a variety of application domains (embedded, desktop, systems, tools) through interviews to gain an understanding of how these projects and teams make use of their selected software life cycle. This data has been used to evaluate the effectiveness of the UPSM. This thesis identifies areas where a currently selected software life cycle can be combined with another to provide benefit to a project and also identifies software tools that could assist in bridging the different life cycles. The purpose of the UPSM discussed in this thesis is to provide software project managers with a unified approach to selecting an appropriate life cycle that best suits a given project.