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Understanding Benchmarking
"A technique that makes use of external comparisons to better evaluate current performance and identify possible actions for the future".
Benchmarking is an important part of process improvement. Tony Rollo of SMS in the UK has produced a PowerPoint presentation that provides an introduction to benchmarking and the ISBSG Benchmark Standard. View the presentation.
Click here to find out how to use the ISBSG Estimating, Benchmarking & Research Suite to do your own benchmarking.
Project benchmarking
A single project or a group of your completed projects can be benchmarked against similar projects in the ISBSG Repository.
Projects can be benchmarked on a number of attributes that are known to influence development productivity, namely:
- Development platform (reflects the development environment)
- Language Type
- Maximum team size
Or any other attributes that are of particular interest to you.
Project benchmarking involves the following steps:
- Identify the key attributes of your project(s), (eg. Development platform, Language etc.)
- Search the ISBSG Repository for a group of projects with the same attributes. (You can use the MS Excel 'Auto-Filter' feature).
- Analyse the selected group of projects, for example if you are interested in benchmarking your Project Delivery Rate, (PDR), (number of hours taken to deliver a function point), establish the median Project Delivery Rate and perhaps the quartiles from the selected group.
- Compare your project's Project Delivery Rate to the PDRs from the selected group.
- Use MS Excel to produce a benchmark table and chart, (see example).
Sample Project benchmark table and chart:
| Project attributes |
N
|
P25%
|
 |
MED
|
Your Project
|
P75%
|
Your Project
|
Development Platform
Mid Range |
52
|
2.6
|
|
5.6
|
|
8.2
|
*10
|
Language Type
4GL |
149
|
2.3
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|
5.4
|
|
9.6
|
*10
|
Maximum Team Size
>8 |
43
|
6.4
|
|
9.1
|
*10
|
15.6
|
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For the two factors with the most significant impact on productivity, namely Development Platform and Language Type, produce a chart like the one below to show how your Project Delivery Rate compares to ISBSG projects with the same Development Platform and Language Type.
You can benchmark your projects using a large number of attributes, for example: programming language, use of a methodology, use of CASE tools, DBMS used etc.
Organisational benchmarking
You can benchmark your organisation's software productivity against that of organisations in the same industry. Using the method described above, select projects from the ISBSG Repository with the same Organisation Type as your organisation. For example: Insurance, Manufacturing, Communications, Banking etc. Use MS Excel to produce benchmarking tables and charts.
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