Measurement

Measurement is a practice that has both short-term motivational benefits and long-term cost, quality and schedule benefits.

Measurement provides an antidote to the common problems of poor estimates, poor scheduling and poor progress visibility.

Companies that have active measurement programs tend to dominate their industries.

Virtually any company or project can benefit from applying Measurement at some level. For greatest effect, Measurement should have high-level management commitment and be enacted through a permanent measurement group.

Measurement can also be implemented to a lesser degree on individual projects by the project team or individual team members.

Efficacy

  • Potential reduction from nominal schedule: Very Good
  • Improvement in progress visibility:  Good
  • Effect on schedule risk:  Decreased Risk
  • Chance of first-time success:  Good
  • Chance of long-term success:  Excellent

Major Risks

  • Over-optimizing of single-factor measurements
  • Misuse of measurements for employee evaluations
  • Misleading information from lines-of-code measurements

Major Interaction and Trade-Offs

  • Provides the foundation for improvements in estimation, scheduling, productivity-tool evaluation and programming-practice evaluation.