Probabilistic Enhancement to the LEAP Process for Identifying Technical Debt in Iterative System Development

The List, Evaluate, Achieve, Procure (LEAP) process defines a methodology for mathematically associating the delivery of system capabilities with the temporal satisfaction of stakeholder needs while identifying technologies at high risk of imparting technical debt into the system. The original proce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE access 2023, Vol.11, p.144030-144039
Main Authors: Kleinwaks, Howard, Batchelor, Ann, Bradley, Thomas H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decision support systems
Electric breakdown
Iterative development planning
Iterative methods
Mathematical models
Probabilistic logic
Schedules
Stakeholders
Statistical analysis
Systems development
Task analysis
technical debt
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Summary:The List, Evaluate, Achieve, Procure (LEAP) process defines a methodology for mathematically associating the delivery of system capabilities with the temporal satisfaction of stakeholder needs while identifying technologies at high risk of imparting technical debt into the system. The original process is qualitative, relying on binary definitions of timelines for technology development - the technology either is or is not developed in a specific time period. The binary definitions allow for rapid high-level assessments of the potential for technical debt. However, they fail to capture more realistic scenarios of uncertain technology development timelines. This paper resolves these issues by introducing probability into LEAP process. This paper also provides examples of using the probability in the LEAP process and compares the probabilistic (quantitative) and binary (qualitative) models. These examples show improvements in the ability to assess the likelihood of delivering capabilities in time to meet stakeholder needs when using the probabilistic version of the LEAP process. Since the impact of technical debt is uncertain, the inclusion of probabilities within the LEAP process provides a higher fidelity decision support system for iterative release planning and system development.
ISSN:2169-3536
2169-3536
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3344651