The goal of software analytics should be insight; i.e. surprises that make us change the way we do business (in our case, the business of software construction, maintenance and evolution). So what insights have we learned from software analytics? Our field is rife with any number of truisms that are commonly quoted but rarely checked. That stops now. Using software analytics, we can check, and prune, many of those truisms. Specifically, the number of variables required to make predictions about SE projects is remarkably small— which means that most of the things we think might affect software quality have little impact in practice.

Full prof, ex-nurse,rocketman,taxi-driver,journalist (it all made sense at the time).