Measurement and Metrics - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 138

10.3.1 Productivity Metrics

Productivity has multiple connotations. The one relevant here is that productivity
is the rate of accomplishing a unit of work. It is the pace of working. It is the rate
of delivering the assignment. While it is not pertinent to include more information
on the concept of productivity in this topic, I suggest that interested readers may
refer to ''Software Estimation: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques for Software
Project Estimators'' (by Murali Chemuturi and published by J.Ross Publishing,
Inc, USA, 2009). The general formula for productivity is:

Productivity ¼ Outputs = Inputs

Inputs are in person hours and outputs are in various units of work for software
development work. It is expressed as so many person hours per unit size as in ''10
person hours per function point''. We can derive the productivity for the following
activities of requirements engineering:

1. A gross productivity metric for all activities of requirements engineering put
together. This would be useful for estimating the requirement of resources at
the beginning of the project, especially for the senior management.
2. For each of the following activities:

a. Elicitation and gathering
b. Establishing the requirements

The formulas for each of these metrics are discussed below.

10.3.1.1 Gross Productivity Metric for Requirements Engineering

The formula is:

GPM ¼ E N

Where:
GPM Gross Productivity Metric for Requirements Engineering

E Effort spent in person hours for all activities of requirements engineering

including, elicitation, gathering, establishing, quality control, and change
management

N Number of requirements as established in the requirements traceability

matrix or URS

Data for this metric can be collated from:

1. Project timesheets in which the effort spent would be available.
2. Number of requirements can be collated from the traceability matrix or URS.