Definition of metrics and creation of tracking tools & review processes
We can work with you to identify what should be measured but isn't, and what is measured and is not producing proper results. We then wok with you to develop new tools, systems, and process and reporting to quickly and effectively take action on measurements.
Organizations often do not consider or measure value added work versus administrative work, and how that might affect which metrics to gather and how accurately to gather them. We can help you differentiate and design the right metrics system for your organization.
We are an advocate for efficiency metrics, a simple example is how many lines of working code per day per person, or how many days to fix a bug. Engineers and their managers will often say that this doesn't work because of differences in complexity, but in our experience it works out very well on average for evaluating remaining work and hence resource decisions.
Challenge: A development team was behind schedule, and as a result they started the stabilization phase later than planned and had a relatively high number defect discovery rate and number of outstanding defects, given the time left before release. The client still needed to finish on the due date, and they were going to have to steal from other commitments to be successful. The question is: how much to steal? Too much borrowing would result in missed future opportunities, too little would fail to make the schedule.
Action: We gather data on how many people worked on prior releases at stabilization time, and how many defects were fixed. THis gave us the average fix rate. Using this number, and current and projected incoming rate trends from the past, we could determine how many people were needed to close the outstanding and incoming defects in time for final testing.
Result: It worked better than we imagined. The client finished on time with required quality, and the release was a success.