Using metrics to manage software projects

Five years ago, Bull's Enterprise Servers Operation in Phoenix, Arizona, used a software process that, although understandable, was unpredictable in terms of product quality and delivery schedule. The process generated products with unsatisfactory quality levels and required significant extra effort to avoid major schedule slips. All but the smallest software projects require metrics for effective project management. Hence, as part of a program designed to improve the quality, productivity, and predictability of software development projects, the Phoenix operation launched a series of improvements in 1989. One improvement based software project management on additional software measures. Another introduced an inspection program, since inspection data was essential to project management improvements. Project sizes varied from several thousand lines of code (KLOC) to more than 300 KLOC. The improvement projects enhanced quality and productivity. In essence, Bull now has a process that is repeatable and manageable, and that delivers higher quality products at lower cost. We describe the metrics we selected and implemented, illustrating with examples drawn from several development projects     

Product Focused Software Process Improvement: Concepts and Experiences from Industry

Management problems in the development of software have been addressed over the last years by a strong focus on the improvement of the development processes. Software process improvement (SPI) activities are characterized by an internal focus on a software development department and its procedures. However, the quality of the product is hardly addressed in software process improvement programs. This paper presents the application of a model for product focused SPI (P-SPI) and describes experiences with this model in practice. The main conclusions are that P-SPI puts products to be developed in a central position in improvement programs, results in fulfilling specific quality goals of a company and project, and industrial experiments show interesting benefits. Applying the approach in industrial projects showed that P-SPI is relatively cheap and gives fast results and high benefits.     

Identifying factors affecting software development cost and productivity

Software systems of today are often complex, making development costs difficult to estimate. This paper uses data from 50 projects performed at one of the largest banks in Sweden to identify factors that have an impact on software development cost. Correlation analysis of the relationship between factor states and project costs was assessed using ANOVA and regression analysis. Ten out of the original 31 factors turned out to have an impact on software development project cost at the Swedish bank including the: number of function points, involved risk, number of budget revisions, primary platform, project priority, commissioning body’s unit, commissioning body, number of project participants, project duration, and number of consultants. In order to be able to compare projects of different size and complexity, this study also considers the software development productivity defined as the amount of function points per working hour in a project. The study at the bank indicates that the productivity is affected by factors such as performance of estimation and prognosis efforts, project type, number of budget revisions, existence of testing conductor, presentation interface, and number of project participants. A discussion addressing how the productivity factors relate to cost estimation models and their factors is presented. Some of the factors found to have an impact on cost are already included in estimation models such as COCOMO II, TEAMATe, and SEER-SEM, for instance function points and software platform. Thus, this paper validates these well-known factors for cost estimation. However, several of the factors found in this study are not included in established models for software development cost estimation. Thus, this paper also provides indications for possible extensions of these models.     

The impacts of quality and productivity perceptions on the use of software process improvement innovations

Numerous software process improvement (SPI) innovations have been proposed to improve software development productivity and system quality; however, their diffusion in practice has been disappointing. This research investigates the adoption of the Personal Software Process on industrial software projects. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that perceived increases in software quality and development productivity, project management benefits, and innovation fit to development tasks, enhance the usefulness of the innovation to developers. Results underscore the need to enrich current technology acceptance models with these constructs, and serve to encourage project managers to adopt formal SPI methods if developers perceive the methods will have positive impacts on their productivity and system quality.     

产品开发项目的离散时间/成本/质量平衡问题研究

为在项目网络计划技术中集成规划产品开发项目的时间、成本和质量,以多模式资源受限的项目调度问题研究为基础,定义了一个能支持产品开发项目优化控制的离散时间、成本和质量平衡问题模型.根据产品开发项目的特点,通过人力资源价格计算产品开发项目成本,采用质量功能展开技术对项目质量进行量化计算.最后给出一个求解该问题模型的分枝剪切算法,并通过一个项目实例对模型和算法进行验证.     

Safe and simple software cost analysis

Simple software cost-analysis methods are readily available, but they aren't always safe. The simplest method is to base your cost estimate on the typical costs or productivity rates of your previous projects. That approach will work well if your new project doesn't have any cost-critical differences from those previous projects, but it won't be safe if some critical cost driver has degraded. Simple history-based software cost-analysis methods would be safer if you could identify which cost driver factors were likely to cause critical cost differences and estimate how much cost difference would result if a critical cost driver changed by a given degree. In this article, I provide a safe and simple method for doing both of these by using some cost-estimating relationships. COCOMO II is an updated and re-calibrated version of COCOMO (COnstructive COst MOdel). I also show how the COCOMO II cost drivers let you perform cost sensitivity and tradeoff analyses, and discuss how you can use similar methods with other software cost-estimation models     

Software development productivity of European space, military, andindustrial applications

The identification, combination, and interaction of the many factors which influence software development productivity makes the measurement, estimation, comparison and tracking of productivity rates very difficult. Through the analysis of a European Space Agency database consisting of 99 software development projects from 37 companies in a European countries, the paper seeks to provide significant and useful Information about the major factors which influence the productivity of European space, military, and industrial applications, as well as to determine the best metric for measuring the productivity of these projects. Several key findings emerge from the study. The results indicate that some organizations are obtaining significantly higher productivity than others. Some of this variation is due to the differences in the application category and programming language of projects in each company; however, some differences must also be due to the ways in which these companies manage their software development projects. The use of tools and modern programming practices were found to be major controllable factors in productivity improvement. Finally, the lines-of-code productivity metric is shown to be superior to the process productivity metric for projects in the authors' database     

Finding the right data for software cost modeling

Good software cost models can significantly help software project managers. With good models, project stakeholders can make informed decisions about how to manage resources, how to control and plan the project, or how to deliver the project on time, on schedule, and on budget. Real-world data sets, such as those coming from software engineering projects, often contain noisy, irrelevant, or redundant variables. We propose that cost modelers should perform data-pruning experiments after data collection and before model building. Such pruning experiments are simple and fast.     

Managing uncertainty in project portfolio cost estimation

Although typically a software development organisation is involved in more than one project simultaneously, the available tools in the area of software cost estimation deal mostly with single software projects. In order to calculate the possible cost of the entire project portfolio, one must combine the single project estimates taking into account the uncertainty involved. In this paper, statistical simulation techniques are used to calculate confidence intervals for the effort needed for a project portfolio. The overall approach is illustrated through the adaptation of the analogy-based method for software cost estimation to cover multiple projects.     

Large-scale industrial reuse to reduce cost and cycle time

For long-term software reuse strategies to work, companies must realize short-term successes. The authors' company improved its time-to-market, productivity and quality by pursuing reuse in two large industrial projects     

水利信息化项目设计概(估)算编制研究

为规范水利信息化项目设计概（估）算编制,合理确定投资,针对水利信息化项目多学科、多行业交叉融合的特点,通过分析国内外相关标准规定,调研典型水利信息化项目实际情况,侧重解决概（估）算编制的重难点问题。提出符合水利信息化实际的项目划分、费用组成与单价构成,并结合软、硬件费用编制的特点,给出相关计算方法,最后通过实例应用验证相关结论。结果表明：水利信息化项目有别于常规水利工程以土木工程为主的特点,是以附加值含量高的软硬件设施设备为主体的新型基础设施项目,设计概（估）算编制应注重合理确定软硬件设备价格,根据项目实际情况科学划分并计算相关费用,才能满足项目设计概（估）算阶段投资控制的需要。     

CP-6: quality and productivity measures in the 15-year life cycle of an operating system

The CP-6 operating system and its compilers, databases, communications, and end-user interfaces were designed, developed, tested, and installed at customer sites in three years from the date the project began. This paper describes the history of this project, the methodology used to produce the 4.7 million lines of code, and the metrics covering development productivity and software quality over 18 releases in the last 12 years. The rigorous methodology and standards used throughout the project, which cover the full lifecycle of design, development, and support, include a statistical database covering development manpower, lines of code produced, and error reports covering 12 years in customer installations. The project achieved software development productivity rates twice as high as those of comparable projects, and error rates half those of comparable projects for product software. The key lessons learned may be applied to other software development projects.     

Quality Approaches in a Large Software House

Many methods, techniques, standards and tools exist for controlling software development, but large, complex projects may face extra problems due to continuous, rapid changes during the project life cycle. Such changes must be tracked, analysed, and reconciled to ensure high quality in the end-product; otherwise problems may be lost or ignored in the overall complexity. A large software company needs to develop effective procedures to control their whole organisation's projects; for example to control more than 100 different types of projects at the same time is a big challenge for most large software companies. This paper is a case study on how a large company benefits from using quality assurance processes and quality standards. It provides details of the process engineering system running in Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL). Most of project managers and top directors in KRDL believe that Good quality software will save millions of dollars! This paper also highlights the benefits of KRDL being able to handle more than 100 projects at the same time and still provide high quality software.     

Successfully outsourcing embedded software development

A large US company, UIC successfully outsources embedded software development after applying people- and project-focused practices developed from a prior failed attempt. In this article the author describes 10 practices that have helped UIC create an offshore development strategy that produces embedded software at a lower cost while maintaining quality. These lessons show how both the people involved in offshore projects and the projects themselves must be treated differently from internally developed projects. Even with the high complexities and intellectual property concerns surrounding embedded software development, UIC has used these practices to establish processes that ensure successful delivery and protection of UIC's intellectual property.     

军用型号项目软件复用成本度量模型

针对军用型号项目软件研制过程中普遍存在的软件复用行为,提出了一种复用成本度量方法,对传统的COCOMO2.0成本度量模型进行了改进,采用改进的功能点法估计软件实际规模,适当调整模型中的评估项,增加了度量系统复用的成本驱动因子及系统通用特性统计项（GSC）,建立了相应的量化评估及DI分级表,形成了军用型号项目软件进度、成本估计模型,使用改进的度量模型对某军用型号项目进行了成本度量,验证了方法的有效性。     

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN ACTION Applying Quality Principles to Software

The software development process remains one of the most uncontrolled and poorly managed functions in all of business. Applying continuous improvement to better the quality and productivity of the process is difficult, but it is also paramount to the ongoing success of a mission critical project. This article examines how a critical manufacturing system project at Motorola evolved from an ad hoc process to a formal software development environment that produces predictable, dependable, quality results.     

MND-SCEMP: an empirical study of a software cost estimation modeling process in the defense domain

The primary focus of weapon systems research and development has moved from a hardware base to a software base and the cost of software development is increasing gradually. An accurate estimation of the cost of software development is now a very important task in the defense domain. However, existing models and tools for software cost estimation are not suitable for the defense domain due to problems of accuracy. Thus, it is necessary to develop cost estimation models that are appropriate to specific domains. Furthermore, most studies of methodology development are aligned with generic methodologies that do not consider the pertinent factors to specific domains, whereas new methodologies should reflect specific domains. In this study, we apply two generic methodologies to the development of a software cost estimation model, before suggesting an integrated modeling process specifically for the national defense domain. To validate our proposed modeling process, we performed an empirical study of 113 software development projects on weapon systems in Korea. A software cost estimation model was developed by applying the proposed modeling process. The MMRE value of this model was 0.566 while the accuracy was appropriate for use. We conclude that the modeling process and software cost estimation model developed in this study is suitable for estimating resource requirements during weapon system development in South Korea’s national defense domain. This modeling process and model may facilitate more accurate resource estimation by project planners, which will lead to more successful project execution.     

中等COCOMO模型在中小型软件项目投资决策中的应用探讨

中等COCOMO模型是经过实际软件项目验证和修正的软件成本估算模型.文章将中等COCOMO模型应用于中小型软件项目投资决策,提出了一套简便而完整的中小型软件项目投资分析方法.     

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN ACTION Applying Quality Principles to Software

The software development process remains one of the most uncontrolled and poorly managed functions in all of business. Applying continuous improvement to better the quality and productivity of the process is difficult, but it is also paramount to the ongoing success of a mission critical project. This article examines how a critical manufacturing system project at Motorola evolved from an ad hoc process to a formal software development environment that produces predictable, dependable, quality results.     

软件工程管理技术在中小软件开发企业的应用研究

研究了软件工程项目计划管理、项目进度管理、成本控制技术在中小软件开发企业中如何应用。重点研究可操作性和管理技术如何裁剪使管理成本降低,达到中小软件开发企业项目管理目标。