Benchmarking of Software Projects

What is benchmarking of software development projects?

Productivity and quality benchmarking for software development projects involves comparing the outcomes of effort, cost, and/or quality per software product unit (typically, function points in accordance with the ISO/IEC standard) of a set of projects with specific features against the average market rates for comparable projects. 

For example, if our company aims to benchmark the productivity and quality of software development projects that possess the following attributes: 

• Core technology Java 
• Projects developed under Agile. 
• Projects developed by Supplier A.  

A representative subset of projects meeting these criteria will be chosen initially. We will measure the quantity of software produced by each of them. This software product unit is the standardising factor that enables comparison. 

With this information of effort, we will calculate the productivity per unit of the software product. And using the quality information provided, we will calculate the ratio of faults per software unit. 

We can subsequently make comparisons with the market. 

Benefits of productivity and quality benchmarking

• Hawthorne effect. This phenomenon can occur in every team: simply by directing our attention towards their performance, improvement can take place spontaneously.
• You possess supplier-specific and technology-specific performance data, enabling you to identify and execute targeted improvement measures.
• You compare yourself with those who are better (and worse).
• Allows for cost and effort reduction.
• Using objective data, this process demonstrates and facilitates change.
• Promotes a culture of continuous learning.
• It is indicative of the success or failure of our strategy. For instance, our adoption of Agile methodology has resulted in increasingly efficient and economic developments of superior quality.

Which organisations would be interested in benchmarking?

• Those seeking to minimise expenses or save resources in their software development.
• Those who are uncertain about the performance of their suppliers or internal teams.
• Those who want to improve.
• Those that want to demonstrate that the improvements they have implemented are having an effect.
• Those who want to include or consolidate change in their development process.

Why LedaMC?

• We are the first company certified for Benchmarking by IFPUG.
• We hold the world’s largest database, containing information on over 90,000 projects.
• We belong to different international metric organisations.
• We have certified consultants.
• Extensive experience in benchmarking for many clients.

Success Stories

Below are successful stories attained through benchmarking software development projects and applications.

The chart displays the difference in efficiency between the projects used for comparison and the market’s productivity. We discovered that the values were below the market rate ranging from 38% in Client 01 to 76% in Client 06.

With the Benchmarking data provided, the customers implemented several measures and achieved savings ranging from €2 million to €10 million after a year.