Practical Software Metrics for Project Management and Process Improvement

This application-oriented book shows how to apply proven software metrics and methods to efficiently manage software development and maintenance--to help boost productivity, efficiency, and quality of software projects at every stage of the process. Detailing practical methods throughout, the book covers tips to best measure and present progress, a useful model for understanding organization limitations, possible problems in process improvement illustrated by examples, evidence of what works and what doesn't work, and more. An ideal reference for project managers and professionals responsible for process improvement.n

At last! New experiences and lessons from one of the authors who brought you Software Metrics: Establishing a Company-Wide Program. This exciting book has over 70 charts and graphs from real projects that will help you to manage software projects and process improvements more effectively.

Project managers: Learn through practical examples what to measure and track, which will help you more effectively manage your projects throughout the life cycle. Learn how to measure and present progress. Most importantly, learn why you need to measure and how important it is for you to tie your measurements to visible, agreed-upon project goals.

People responsible for process improvement: Learn a useful model for understanding organizational limitations. Explore the relationship between tools and the potential for achieving improvements. Examine some of the potential problems you might face and see examples of how some of them have been avoided. Finally, discover how metrics can be rolled up into useful, balanced organizational indicators.

This book emphasizes proven practices and results. These include:

• Which software development "rules" are supported by measured evidence
• How measurement should be tightly linked to organizational strategies
• How the metrics that engineers find useful help project managers as well
• What people feel about metrics and what approaches you can take to gain their support
• How metrics are used to achieve continuous process improvement
• Which measures are meaningful for a large organization