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Tutorial 2: Bridging the Gap Between Business Strategy and Software Measurement

 

Target Audience:
QA practitioners, project managers, software managers, software developers, and anyone interested in process improvement and assessment

Level: Intermediate

What will you learn :

  • Identify, structure, and quantify organizational business goals;
  • Identify software project strategies (objectives) that contribute to the achievement of business objectives;
  • Understand relationships between objectives in various organizational levels;
  • Detect inconsistencies and conflicts in implementing organization-wide business strategies;
  • Specify measurement systems for business and project objectives;
  • Identify and understand potential relationships and conflicts between identified business goals;
  • Interpret project data for the purpose of understanding/controlling the achievement of project and business objectives.
     Gain an overview of the process development life cycle

Description:
In today’s competitive market organizational success depends on synchronizing the corporate strategy, in terms of market opportunities and software project objectives such as increased product reliability or reduced development schedule.

Accordingly, in order to understand relationships between these objectives, an integrated quantitative approach is called for to define, measure, and synchronize organization strategies and software project objectives.
In our tutorial we present an integrated framework that specifies quantitative objectives at various organizational levels, including measures and data interpretation principles. The presented methods and techniques will be illustrated with industrial experiences gained at Fraunhofer Center Maryland (USA) and Fraunhofer IESE (Germany).

Outline:

  • Session I: Introduction to Software Measurement
    • Motivation
      • Why do Organizations Measure?
      • Problems in Establishing a Software Measurement Program 
    • Defining the right goals
      • Tying corporate goals to software goals
      • Inheriting software goals from corporate goals
      • Identifying the context and temporal aspects of goal definition and achievement
      • Collecting the right data
      • The tension between individual project needs and corporate needs with respect to measures taken
      • Maximizing benefits while minimizing costs of data collection and analysis
      • Taking maximum advantage of existing data
      • Defining and sustaining the measurement process
      • Creating the right organizational structure
      • Getting feedback to projects in a timely fashion
      • Maintaining commitment within all organizational levels
    • Measurement Principles and Basics
      • What is measurement?
      • Objective versus Subjective Measures
      • Quantifying Entities
      • Measurement Scales
      • Measurement Stakeholders
      • Levels of Measurement Ability
      • The Measurement Process
    • Goal-oriented Measurement
      • Problems with Measurement
      • Measurement and other Quality Initiatives
      • Basics of the GQM Approach
      • The GQM Structure
      • GQM-specific Measurement Process
      • Generating a Measurement Goal
      • Template to Define GQM Goals and Example
      • Goal Derivation Concepts 
      • Deriving Process Questions
      • Guidelines for Deriving Product-oriented Questions
      • Goals and Improvement activities
      • Examples
      • Lessons Learned
  • Session II: GQM+Strategies - Business Goal-driven Definition of Measurement Programs
    • Current Practices
    • Management Gap
    • Closing the Measurement Gap
    • Attacking the Problem
    • Making the Linkages - Goal Derivation Concepts
    • Defining The Right Goals: Business Goals to Measurement Goals
      • Select The Right Business Goals
      • Select The Right Set of Strategy Decisions
      • Select The Right Software Goals
      • Select the Right Scenario Templates and Steps
      • Select the Right Measurement Goals
    • Derive Questions and Metrics and Interpret Results
    • Relationships among Goals – Goal Conflicts
    • Practical Example A
    • Key Components to Support the Building of a Software Measurement Program 
  • Session III: Practical Exercises
    • Practical Example B
    • Exercise
  • Session IV: Implementing a Measurement Program - Measurement Key Areas
    • Measurement Instrumentation
      • Creation of a Measurement Plan
      • Data Collection
      • Selection and Preparation of Data Collection Tools
    • Data Collection and Validation
      • Data Collection Process
      • Assurance of Data Quality
      • Control of Data Collection Process
      • Guidelines for Data Collection
    • Data Analysis, Visualization, and Interpretation
      • Descriptive statistics
      • Variance outliers
      • Apply quality model
      • Derived measures
      • Statistical analysis
      • Analyze influencing factors
      • Setting Target Values and Baselines
      • Visualizations and Interpretations
      • Corporate and Project Level Results
    • Management of a Measurement Program
      • Goals of a Measurement Program
      • Understanding the Business
      • Baseline models and relationships
      • Managing Software Projects based on Quantitative Evidence
      • Planning and estimating 
      • Decision-making
      • Guiding Improvement
      • Cost Considerations in Setting Up a Measurement Program
  • Summary 

Prerequisites:
 None.

Presenters:
Dr. Carolyn Seaman, Associate Professor
UMBC

Dr. Seaman is an Associate Professor at UMBC in Baltimore and a Scientist at the Fraunhofer Center, Maryland. Her research emphasizes software measurement, maintenance, communication, and qualitative research methods. She holds degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Maryland, Georgia Tech, and the College of Wooster (Ohio). She has worked in the software industry as a software engineer and consultant, and has conducted most of her research in industrial and governmental settings.

Myrna Regardie, Scientist and Senior Engineer
Faunhofer Center Maryland

Ms. Regardie from the Fraunhofer Center Maryland is one of the developers of GQM+ Strategies. She has over 30 years of process improvement experience working with large cross-functional organizations, mentoring in both software and business process improvement methods and establishing metrics. As part of NASAs Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL), the founding organization of GQM, she applied and conducted software measurement research and built estimation models. She holds a BS degree in mathematics from Juniata College.