Process Improvement through Evaluation of Operational Feasibility of Strategic Release Planning

Improvements in software processes can improve software quality, cost, and on-time delivery. Supplementing strategic software release planning with fine grain operational planning provides project managers the tools and abilities to make timely decisions affecting the project. Strategic planning of software releases is accomplished by the assignment of requirements to releases on a strategic level where effort, finance and risk constraints are considered to determine the strategic release plans. Strategic planning however needs to be supplemented by more fine-grained planning typically performed in project management known as operational release planning. Operational planning as a refinement of strategic planning is performed for the immediate next release. In this paper, we present the improvements in software development process and product by performing the evaluation of the operational feasibility of strategic software planning. We also present the use of research prototype ReleasePlanner in a real-world situation through a case study at Trema Laboratories Inc and the improvements achieved.