  Software is highly contextual. While there are cross-cutting `global'
lessons, individual software projects exhibit many `local' properties. This
data heterogeneity makes drawing local conclusions from global data dangerous.
A key research challenge is to construct locally accurate prediction models
that are informed by global characteristics and data volumes. Previous work has
tackled this problem using clustering and transfer learning approaches, which
identify locally similar characteristics. This paper applies a simpler approach
known as Bayesian hierarchical modeling. We show that hierarchical modeling
supports cross-project comparisons, while preserving local context. To
demonstrate the approach, we conduct a conceptual replication of an existing
study on setting software metrics thresholds. Our emerging results show our
hierarchical model reduces model prediction error compared to a global approach
by up to 50%.
