ISBSG Resources
ISBSG has a wealth of resources (i.e. reports, articles, conference papers and videos) on a wide range of software management topics. These topics include: productivity, planning and estimation, benchmarking, agile, maintenance and support, project control, outsourcing and sizing your project.
ISBSG resources are written by IT and metrics professionals, who are leaders in their field of expertise.
ISBSG Webinars
ISBSG webinars are presented by guest speakers who share their expertise in software metrics. Choose from our list below.
Effort Estimation
There are two fundamental approaches to support software project’s effort and cost estimation: parametric cost models and analogy-based processes. The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a planning tool, often poorly used to support such crucial needs. We must clearly identify, in the WBS, the activities covered by the parametric models and those should be estimated as a result of the expert judgement. The presentation will focus on analyzing these aspects by presenting good and bad practices in the use of these support techniques.
Agile Team Performance Benchmarking
While traditional performance metrics often measure individual output or adherence to pre-defined plans, measuring performance in agile teams requires a different approach. Agile teams operate in iterative cycles, prioritizing adaptability and learning over rigid goals. Organizations still measure their performance for the following reasons: transparency and communication, learning and continuous improvement and ensuring value delivery.
Project Delivery Rate or Productivity
Is the Project Delivery Rate (PDR) and Productivity the same measure? Are the values unique for all projects? What are the main drivers used to determine an appropriate value for PDR and Productivity so they provide a reference range of values?
Analysis of Delivery Speed
/in project controlMany organizations have moved to an agile way of working. Their goal is to produce as much value as possible in fixed iterations (sprints). Story Point estimation, which is used to estimate work effort, is a non-standardized, subjective, relative estimation method. Only effort metrics based on standardized methods for functional size measurement can be used to compare team performance metrics, such as Velocity (Delivery Speed) in a meaningful way. In the ISBSG Repository, the sizes of projects are measured using standardized (ISO compliant) methods. Therefore, it is possible to compare the delivery speed between teams and organizations. In this short paper, the Delivery Speed of agile projects delivered with the primary programming language of Java is analyzed.
Global Trends in Software Engineering
/in project controlThis short paper summarises the results of the recently published Global Trend Research Report on Software Engineering, published by the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA) of Japan. Many experts from the software measurement community, (e.g., from Nesma, COSMIC, IFPUG, ISBSG, etc.,) were interviewed and provided input for this research.
ABAP SAP Projects
/in productivitySAP 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.
Functional Size Measurement
/in productivityOrganizations 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.
Manpower Delivery Rate
/in estimationISBSG has data for more than12,500 development projects, new releases and agile sprints. This data can be used to calculate a number of important metrics, including Manpower Delivery Rate (MDR). This is the number of functional size units delivered per person per elapsed month. This short report examines the MDR for different project criteria in the ISBSG Repository.
Price per Function Point Contract
/in agileVelocity 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.