Evidence-Based Timelines for project Retrospectives (EBTR) is a method that supports group reflection of the entire project life cycle. It can be used to assess and improve on, for example, the impact of requirements engineering on development projects.

The EBTR method was designed in close collaboration with one case company (papers 1) and evaluated for this first case company (paper 2). It has also been applied to another case by researchers from Fraunhofer Institute, Germany (case 2). Through comparison between the EBTR applications for case 1 and case 2 a set of variation points have been identified (paper 3) with which it is possible to configure the method to suit both broad and specific assessment goals, as well as, allow for other variations depending on the requirements of the specific case.

• Method guidelines and material for initial evaluation (paper 2 and case 1 in paper 3)
• Information on case 2 in paper 3
  • IBIS project website (in German)
  • EBTR meeting agenda (in English)
  • Photos of the timeline

Contacts: Elizabeth Bjarnason, Björn Regnell

Publications

1. E. Bjarnason, B. Regnell. “Evidence-Based Timelines for Agile Project Retrospectives – A Method Proposal”, Proc. Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming (XP 2012), May 2012, pp. 177-184.
2. E. Bjarnason, R. Berntsson Svensson, B. Regnell. "Evidence-Based Timelines for Project Retrospectives-A Method for Assessing Requirements Engineering in Context", Proc. 2nd Int. Workshop on EMPirical Requirements Engineering (EMPiRE'12), Sept. 2012.
3. E. Bjarnason, A. Hess, J. Doerr, B. Regnell. "Variations on the Evidence-Based Timeline Retrospective Method. A Comparison of Two Cases", Proc. 39th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA 2013), Aug. 2013.