Moving Toward Evidence-Based Software Production

Computer software is increasingly critical to the products, infrastructure, and science upon which society depends. However, the production of society’s software is known to be problematic. Current understanding of software production, largely based on anecdotes, is inadequate. Achieving the deeper understanding needed to transform software production experiences into software production improvements requires collecting and using evidence on a large scale. This paper proposes some steps toward that outcome, with particular attention to what government can do to stimulate software engineering studies that will advance the capabilities of software production.