SDGear

Software Development Governance (SDG) is increasingly important to the success of companies engaged in large software-intensive projects and comprises specifically: (1) the structure of decision making for a software development effort: the roles involved in decision making and the “chains of responsibility” of those roles; (2) the means for monitoring the decisions, including information collected: (metrics) and the mechanisms for collecting that information; and, (3) the way the activities of the development effort are controlled (methods, processes, and norms). SDG helps software projects to deliver value by ensuring projects are aligned with business goals and reduces risk by providing insight into the development effort. Furthermore, SDG promotes communication among developers and decision makers as well as facilitates motivation by defining clear roles and norms derived from sound principles. While point solutions exist that address specific aspects of SDG, at present there are no comprehensive SDG solutions. Current SDG tool options are large, monolithic tools that are consequently difficult to integrate into an existing development environment. The SDGear project aims to take a giant leap from these emergent software governance practices towards well defined, highly adaptive, iterative and efficient software development governance, by developing the first cloud platform offering SDG as a service.