In the context of Agile application development, input-based Time & Materials (T&M) contracts are considered to be an industry “bad practice”. Payment for work is based upon the effort spent, rather than value delivered, potentially ignoring improvements in delivery speed and productivity. To overcome this issue, organizations are increasingly looking towards output-based contracting models that utilize objective, standardized metrics. By leveraging industry-recognized data from the ISBSG alongside frameworks such as the Dutch practice guideline NPR 5333 (output-based measurement, performance management and contracting), and Easy Functional Sizing (EFS), stakeholders can establish a “win-win” model based on transparency, fair risk-sharing, and clear, data-driven performance management.

The use of functional size measurement and software metric data provide Scrum Masters with a more reliable indicator of their team’s performance and productivity. By comparison, Story Points may be useful for internal team coordination, but make it difficult to compare performance across different teams or against industry standards. This short report discusses how Scrum Masters benefit from using functional size and standardized metrics based on ISBSG data.

Velocity is a key metric which is used to measure the work delivered by an Agile team. While story points represent the effort required to complete a unit of work, they are subjective. Therefore, the velocity calculated using story points can be unreliable. However, function points, which quantify the functional size of software, provide a more objective and consistent basis for measuring velocity. By using function points, teams can gain a clearer understanding of their delivery speed and make more accurate predictions for future sprints. Delivery speed (velocity) based on function points is an important metric.
This short paper dives into the delivery-speed metrics of agile teams. To do so, it analyses the delivery speed of a sample of Java projects from the ISBSG Repository.