  Background: Despite the growth in the use of software analytics platforms in
industry, little empirical evidence is available about the challenges that
practitioners face and the value that these platforms provide. Aim: The goal of
this research is to explore the benefits of using a software analytics platform
for practitioners managing quality. Method: In a technology transfer project, a
software analytics platform was incrementally developed between academic and
industrial partners to address their software quality problems. This paper
focuses on exploring the value provided by this software analytics platform in
two pilot projects. Results: Practitioners emphasized major benefits including
the improvement of product quality and process performance and an increased
awareness of product readiness. They especially perceived the semi-automated
functionality of generating quality requirements by the software analytics
platform as the benefit with the highest impact and most novel value for them.
Conclusions: Practitioners can benefit from modern software analytics
platforms, especially if they have time to adopt such a platform carefully and
integrate it into their quality assurance activities.
