METRICS FOR MEASURING THE EFFECT OF MENTAL STRESS ON FAULT GENERATION DURING SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The effects of mental stress on fault-generation are quantitatively determined through a controlled experiment. Two teams develop the same software program under the same conditions, except for mental stress. One team is mentally stressed during the functional design phase, while the other one is not. The degree of stress is measured by two types of metrics: “inner metrics” and “outer metrics”. The inner metrics, which measure the degree of stress, show that the “stressed team” generates more faults than the “nonstressed team”. Among the inner metrics, the “schedule pressure” and “workload” metrics are the most effective for predicting fault generation. Among the outer metrics, the fatigue meter value is related to all inner metrics and is therefore useful for verifying the inner metric values.