Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
A Model for Selecting an Optimum Set of Measures in
Software Organizations
Ansar Malook Bhatti, Hafiz Muhammad Abdullah, and Cigdem Gencel
Blekinge Institute of Technology, School of Engineering,
372 25 Ronneby, Sweden
{ambh07,hmabh07}@student.bth.se, cigdem.gencel@bth.se
Abstract.
Most of the software organizations face difficulties in choosing the
measures to collect since there is no universal set of measures for all types of
organizations and projects. Experience shows that measurement can be more
successful if the measures are collected based on the goals of the organization
or the project which it will serve. However, one of the major constraints for the
organizations is the associated cost for the resources needed when collecting the
measures. Therefore, based on their goals, the software organizations require
collecting not only as few measures from a large number of possible measures
as possible but an optimum set of measures as well. In this paper, we propose a
model, called 'Optimum Measures Set Decision (OMSD) Model', which is an
extension of the well-known Goal Question Metric (GQM) paradigm using a
heuristics approach. We performed a survey by distributing a structured ques-
tionnaire to a number of people from the industry in order evaluate and get
feedback on these factors. We evaluated the rules of the model by means of
some sample cases we created. In this paper, we discuss OMSD as well as the
empirical studies we conducted in order to develop it.
Keywords:
Software Measurement Program, Software Measures, Software
Process Improvement, Goal Question Metric.
1 Introduction
Software measurement process has become an integral part for software process due to
its significance in project estimations, decision making and software process improve-
ment [1]. However, in spite of the fact that many organizations started measurement
programs to benefit from it; the failure rates for software measurement programs in
software organizations are still very high.
About 80% of the measurement programs were reported to fail to either helping in
decision making or delivering performance improvements for numerous reasons [2],
[3]. Some of the most significant reasons stated are as follows [2], [4], [5]:
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Focusing on collecting process rather than having clear action plans for improv-
ing the organizational processes and/or making decisions,
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Inappropriate measures selection; a misunderstanding of what is to be measured,
why and how it is to be measured,
