Publisher's Synopsis
To succeed in the software industry, managers need to cultivate a reliable development process. By measuring what teams have achieved on previous projects, managers can more accurately set goals, make bids, and ensure the successful completion of new projects.
Acclaimed long-time collaborators Lawrence H. Putnam and Ware Myers present simple but powerful measurement techniques to help software managers allocate limited resources and track project progress.
Drawing new findings from an extensive database of software project metrics, the authors demonstrate how readers can control projects with just five core metrics—Time, Effort, Size, Reliability, and Process Productivity. With these metrics, managers can adjust ongoing projects to changing conditions—surprises that would otherwise cause project failure.
Insights from the Book
"Whether it's a single company making use of metrics or nine companies finding out from measurements how much difference a new technology made, metrics can tell us that we are doing things right. Metrics provide and enable the following:
* dependable estimates of project effort, schedule, and reliability
* control of the project during its course
* ability to replan an errant project along the way
* master-planning the assignment of resources to all projects within the organization
* monitoring process improvement from year to year
"Furthermore, an organization can apply these same metric capabilities to the oversight of development subcontractors and outsourcing contractors."
"But first we must ask, What do we mean by doing things right? We mean that fundamentally, we are turning out software products in less development time, with less effort, at a better reliability level." - From Chapter 1
