Time Pressure in Software Engineering: A Systematic Review. Large project overruns and overtime work have been reported in the software industry, resulting in additional expense for companies and personal issues for developers. The present work aims to provide an overview of studies related to time pressure in software engineering; specifically, existing definitions, possible causes, and metrics relevant to time pressure were collected, and a mapping of the studies to software processes and approaches was performed. Moreover, we synthesize results of existing quantitative studies on the effects of time pressure on software development, and offer practical takeaways for practitioners and researchers, based on empirical evidence. Our search strategy examined 5,414 sources, found through repository searches and snowballing. Applying inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in the selection of 102 papers, which made relevant contributions related to time pressure in software engineering. The majority of high quality studies report increased productivity and decreased quality under time pressure. Frequent categories of studies focus on quality assurance, cost estimation, and process simulation. It appears that time pressure is usually caused by errors in cost estimation. The effect of time pressure is most often identified during software quality assurance. The majority of empirical studies report increased productivity under time pressure, while the most cost estimation and process simulation models assume that compressing the schedule increases the total needed hours. We also find evidence of the mediating effect of knowledge on the effects of time pressure, and that tight deadlines impact tasks with an algorithmic nature more severely. Future research should better contextualize quantitative studies to account for the existing conflicting results and to provide an understanding of situations when time pressure is either beneficial or harmful.

Effective social productivity measurements during software development: an empirical study Much of contemporary scientific discussion regarding factors that influence software development productivity is undertaken in various domains where there is an insufficient empirical basis for exploring sociotechnical factors of productivity that are specific to a software development organization. The purpose of the study is to characterize the multidimensional nature of software development productivity and its social aspects as a set of latent constructs (i.e. variables that are not directly observed) for a mediumsized software company. To this end, we designed an exploratory indepth field study based on the hypothesized productivity constructs, which were modeled by a set of factors identified from literature reviews, and later refined by industrial focus groups. In order to demonstrate the applicability of our approach, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis with the data attained from a questionnaire with 216 participants. To investigate factors of influence further, we analyzed the impact of selected teambased variables over the latent constructs of productivity. Taken together, our findings confirm that such an approach can be used to explore the quantifiable influence of sociotechnical factors that would affect productivity of a particular software development organization. Ultimately, the resulting model provides guidance to explore the comparative importance of a set of firmspecific factors that may help to improve the productivity of the organization.