Interdisciplinary research project to inform IT industry practice
Dr Carolyn Mair, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology from Southampton Solent University has been awarded funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to lead an 18-month project that aims to address a global problem for the IT industry.
The project, ‘Metacognitive Instruction, Confidence and Prediction Accuracy in Software Engineering’ (MICaPASE), aims to address poor software cost prediction in the IT industry.
Using field studies, surveys and experiments, it aims to help senior software engineers understand and improve their own judgement, decision making and prediction processes, under uncertain and ambiguous conditions.
Improved prediction will enable the IT industry to reach better business decisions - such as tendering, cost-benefit analyses and more effective project management and tracking.
As well as other metacognitive training materials, the project uses the ReaLiSE system developed through Dr Mair’s Curriculum Fellowships and extended in a collaborative project with Bournemouth University funded by the HEA Psychology Network.
MICaPASE topped the rankings of the 33 projects considered by the EPSRC at their prioritisation panel and was awarded a £91,000 funding grant.
Computer Scientists, Professor Shepperd, Department of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel University and Prof Jorgensen, from Simula Labs, Norway are the project’s academic collaborators.
Industrial collaborators, Hewlett Packard and Lloyds-TSB, have demonstrated confidence in the research team by committing time and resources to the project with the expectation that principles derived from the research can be fed directly back to their IT functions.
But it’s not just the IT industry that stands to benefit from the project. “With the total state spending on IT estimated at more than $420bn globally, £7.6bn in the UK alone, this project is important and timely,” says Dr Mair.
“The recent Coalition spending cuts have highlighted the need for better management of government IT projects. This urgent need for improved project management is a major feature of the Cabinet Office Business Plan 2011-2015.”
“Governments and the general public - as tax payers and consumers of IT - will benefit from more cost effective choices with fewer cancelled projects and wasted resources due to ill-informed procurement processes.”
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