While software metrics have been around for many years, accurately understanding what the metric means and using it effectively in a project has been an issue.
The Challenges
1) Software metrics deal with variable measurements. Effort, Size are variables and hence have high degree of uncertainty in their measurement. In addition the measures, including defects, are captured by individuals.
2) Many metrics are measurable only at the end of project - like productivity, Review effectiveness etc. This results in project teams not giving importance to capturing data during the course of project
3) Lack of integrated tools to capture and report data
4) Metrics are seen more as value adds rather than hygiene. Even today, many of projects and clients are unaware about the power of data, benchmarking and decision making using project performance data
5) Software project inefficiencies (like high CoQ, defect densities) have not grown to a state where they are a problem. We are still content to live without knowledge of the inefficiencies. In other words, the power of improving project performance by understanding current performance is not realized by many
In order to mitigate the challenges, all that is needed is to follow a simple series of steps
1) Understand the project, client and organization objectiveness and define your project goals.
For example, one of the client goals will be that the end users have to be really satisfied and have to spend less time testing the software. This will translate to a goal on Delivered defect density
2) From your project goals, define the measures you want to track in your project and have an appropriate tracking tool
Without a proper system to track data, it will be "Junk in Junk out"
3) Ensure that all your team members understand why a certain metric is tracked
4) Ensure that data is tracked frequently and logged so that integrity and quality of data is good
5) Monitor project performance regularly - atleast once a month
6) Compare the performance against goals and benchmarks
The benefits of a good metrics system is more when you are able to take decisions at regular intervals
For your information, a basic list of all metrics and how they are relevant is attached here
Please post your views, feedback and experiences. If you need any further infromation on these topics, please comment and one of us will respond.
The Challenges
1) Software metrics deal with variable measurements. Effort, Size are variables and hence have high degree of uncertainty in their measurement. In addition the measures, including defects, are captured by individuals.
2) Many metrics are measurable only at the end of project - like productivity, Review effectiveness etc. This results in project teams not giving importance to capturing data during the course of project
3) Lack of integrated tools to capture and report data
4) Metrics are seen more as value adds rather than hygiene. Even today, many of projects and clients are unaware about the power of data, benchmarking and decision making using project performance data
5) Software project inefficiencies (like high CoQ, defect densities) have not grown to a state where they are a problem. We are still content to live without knowledge of the inefficiencies. In other words, the power of improving project performance by understanding current performance is not realized by many
In order to mitigate the challenges, all that is needed is to follow a simple series of steps
1) Understand the project, client and organization objectiveness and define your project goals.
For example, one of the client goals will be that the end users have to be really satisfied and have to spend less time testing the software. This will translate to a goal on Delivered defect density
2) From your project goals, define the measures you want to track in your project and have an appropriate tracking tool
Without a proper system to track data, it will be "Junk in Junk out"
3) Ensure that all your team members understand why a certain metric is tracked
4) Ensure that data is tracked frequently and logged so that integrity and quality of data is good
5) Monitor project performance regularly - atleast once a month
6) Compare the performance against goals and benchmarks
The benefits of a good metrics system is more when you are able to take decisions at regular intervals
For your information, a basic list of all metrics and how they are relevant is attached here
Please post your views, feedback and experiences. If you need any further infromation on these topics, please comment and one of us will respond.
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