Directing software development projects with product metrics

Abstract

Software development managers are responsible for the timely completion of projects. They try to effectively focus team effort on the appropriate activities to complete projects on schedule and with high quality. In order to judge the status of projects so that teams can react accordingly, managers need project measurements which consist of both product and process metrics. We show the effective application of a small set of metrics, identified in a series of empirical studies, to assist managers in tracking and controlling software projects. In our studies, development team effort is directed by the metric curves which are driven to conform to "signatures of confidence" derived from successful projects with similar characteristics. Projects have been successfully managed by using this technique and ongoing studies in industry are showing positive results.