The process of software development is iterative and probabilistic. It is iterative in the sense that a programmer often repeats a sequence of steps in the software development process; edit, compile, launch test run, for example. It is probabilistic in that the times in each of the steps of the process can vary, and the number of times a cycle will be repeated before the programmer can move on to the next phase is unpredictable. A timed Markov process can model both aspects.

A timed Markov process is a Markov process, augmented with dwell times for state transitions. Each state transition has both a probability of transition and a dwell time associated with it. Timed Markov processes closely resemble signal flow graphs, [6]for which well known methods exist to estimate time to completion. Iterative design processes and software development processes have been studied using similar techniques.[7] [8]

In Figure 1, prob(B|A) is the probability of transitioning to state B given that the process is now in state A. time(A|B) is the dwell time spent in state A given that the next state transitioned to is B. prob(C|A), which would equal 1-prob(B|A) in this example, is the probability of transitioning to state C given that the process is now in state A.