Modeling Software Development Process Complexity

Current Complexity Approaches

Software complexity relates to both software product and to SDP. Several approaches of software complexity have been proposed by researchers according to the domain where they originated from.

Zuse (1990) approached software complexity from a programmer’s psychological perspective and defined it as the difficulty to analyze, maintain, test, design and modify software. Along the same lines, Kushwaha & Mishra (2006) defined software complexity as the degree of difficulty to understand and verify a system or a component. Keshavarz, Modiri, & Pedram, (2011) stated that although there were different approaches for defining software complexity, most of them comply with Zuse’s approach. Ribbers & Schoo (2002) in their research for complex software implementation programs, examined complexity through the prism of implementation complexity and identified three complexity dimensions: variety, variability and integration. Variety is defined as the different states a system can take. Variability of a system is defined as the dynamics of its elements and the interrelations between them. Finally, integration is referred to as the planned changes during the implementation program including IT systems and business processes.