In 2007, ISBSG published a short analysis asking a simple question: does it matter, in terms of delivery performance, whether software is built in-house, outsourced to a domestic supplier, or sent offshore? This report revisits the 2007 analysis and adds the sourcing model that has grown fastest in the interim — nearshoring. This is combined with the August 2026 ISBSG Development & Enhancement (D&E) release (13,718 projects) and current external market research. Based on key findings, recommendations are made for organisations considering sourcing strategies.

SAP software enables organisations to manage their business processes. ABAP, SAP’s proprietary, programming language enables SAP systems to be customised to meet the requirements of the user organisation. This short report analyses projects coded in ABAP, in the ISBSG Repository. It examines the size, productivity and delivery speed of ABAP projects.

Organizations pay large sums of money to have external companies benchmark their IT infrastructure. Application development, maintenance and support is often beyond the scope of these benchmarks. Ironically, the amount of money spent on these activities is, for many organizations, more than 50% of the total IT spend. The functional size of applications enables the calculation of valuable, benchmarking metrics. They include: Project Delivery Rate, Cost Efficiency, Delivery Speed and Value Delivered. These metrics can be compared against metrics, for similar projects, from the ISBSG Data Repository. The results of these comparisons can then used as a basis for improvements in cost and productivity for projects. This short paper delves into the world of functional size measurement, providing insights into the power of implementing and using it.

Do certain application types have better productivity rates than others? This short paper examines the productivity rates for different application types in the ISBSG Repository. It compares statistics to determine which application is a winner in terms of productivity!