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Software Development Process Metrics ---- Why Should You Care ?

October 14, 2020

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“A recent customer increased its productivity by more than 300% without working extended hours in the last 6 months. You could be the next.”

Software development process metrics are a way to measure your development process activities — is it optimal, improving, stable, on target, manageable, meeting quality expectations, under control, predictable?  Most importantly, process metrics give you crucial insights into your teams’ actual versus target performance even in WFH scenarios and lends you the control levers to run your process under your control and make the shift towards process excellence. The bottom-line —- optimization of your process activities leads to better business outcomes and facilitates measurement of project success.

Software Development Process Metrics can be categorized as —- 

  • Result Metrics:  metrics that are mostly an absolute measure of an activity / process completed, e.g. Time taken (aka Cycle Time) to complete a User Story of 1 story point.
  • Predictive Metrics:  metrics that are derivatives and act as early warning signs of an unfavorable result, e.g. Standard Deviation of Cycle Time is high implying the development process is out of control and needs immediate action.

Program Managers and PMOs utilize these process metrics for conveying a result or a prediction based on process data collected, with the aim of improving teams’ process activities. Besides, it enables finding tangible answers to the questions —-

  • How long will it take to deliver one user story?
  • What are my control levers to reduce the Cycle Time and overall Time to Market?
  • Can the software be shipped on time?
  • How much money will be incurred to deliver one user story and in overall?
  • What is my current productivity?
  • Can I increase my productivity by x% and reduce my cost?
  • What is my defect leakage ratio?
  • What is my defect removal efficiency?
  • What is the average time for rework, which is a cost to quality?
  • Is my cost to quality under control?
  • What is my performance of Impact Analysis? Is it adequate?
  • What is my performance of Development? Is it adequate?
  • What is my performance of Quality Control? Is it adequate?
  • What is my performance of Code Review? Is it adequate?
  • What is my performance of Unit Testing? Is it adequate?
  • What is the average duration of UAT?
  • What is my current level of resource performance?
  • What I need to do to improve my resource utilization?
  • How many planned versus actual story points am I delivering in each sprint?
  • What is my overall performance trend cycle by cycle?

The above list of questions is only a subset of a larger set of questions that a Program Manager / PMO / Leadership Team always wants to know. On a broader scale, they can get answers to the following interest areas:

  • Progress: The achievement or completion of goals or commitments.
  • Resources: The availability or capability of organizational assets.
  • Quality: The problems and/or defects with a product or process.
  • Stability: The degree of change, completeness, or effectiveness.

Having said this, however, finding the answers is always labor intensive. You would probably give a good shout at me to tell me that Microsoft Projects, Primavera, Jira etc. exist,  but hold on, they are project management tools for managing schedule, budget and cost at a high level and do not offer meaningful insights for measurement of each element of a process (user story creation, impact analysis, coding, unit testing, review, testing, rework, UAT etc.) for optimization, improvement and control of standard deviations, leading to process stabilization. An ideal software development metrics tool is an extension of the Project Management Tools which help Program Managers / PMO to measure multiple metrics effortlessly in just one click to ensure that the complete picture of success is accurate and attainable. Further, using multiple or integrated metrics is essential in measuring project progress and performance.

Conclusion

The need of the hour is a tool, preferably cloud based, that offers the capability to Program Managers / PMOs to get a one-click answer to all the above questions and more. It should offer insta dashboards of the team’s performance utilizing CMMI standard software development process metrics and indicate proactive actions. For Project Managers, What-If-Analysis models in such a tool can serve as the target attainment means for given targets by Program Managers / PMO.

 

About the Author

Jayanta Chakrabarty is Lead Strategist with Zibal Technologies and a seasoned Technology Projects Management professional. He is a key personnel of SEPG (Software Excellence Process Group). He contributes for technical journals. He is a well known Corporate Trainer, Mentor and Architect of high value solutions. He can be reached through mail: jayanta@zibal.com


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Zibal Technologies
Lead Strategist

Zibal Technologies

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