Benchmarking objectives include a balanced approach to software development. This ensures that important project-related factors are considered.

The relative importance of every business factor can be given a priority rating (“weighting”).  This can change over time as the business recognizes areas that need improvement.

Each year the benchmark can be compared, with the ultimate goal of achieving best practice in all areas.

Often executive performance measure can include a specific benchmark rating, ensuring everyone is working towards a common goal.

This is an example of how each area was rated (1-3).  You can see that customer satisfaction has been neglected in favour of cost-effective, on-time, on-budget delivery.

When applying the “weightings” the overall benchmark result would be 2.8 out of 3.0.  This would be compared year by year.  For this reason it is quite important to get the ratings correct at the beginning. However, if ratings, due to changes in business values, there is a reduction in the effectiveness of year-by-year comparisons.