Performance Analysis

Diagnosis

You know your performance could be better. You may even think you know what the focus of improvement should be. But how can you be sure you're doing the right things at the right time to guarantee delivery of the optimum improvement?

If you seek medical advice, the first thing the doctor will do is examine you. If you report a crime, the police will gather evidence. If planning a building project, you engage a quantity surveyor. So before launching into a significant change programme for a software-intensive system, make sure your decisions are based on facts, evidence and expert professional advice.

Software Measurement Services Ltd., as the name suggests, specialise in the objective measurement and evaluation of software services, processes and products. We can provide both quantitative assessment and qualitative assessment, and are the only UK based company currently offering such a diverse range of professional assessment services.

The Symptomatic Diagnostic for Rightshifting Effectiveness

SMS has developed a quick, low-cost, fact-based method of benchmarking your organisation on the 5-point scale of effectiveness. It provides an objective view of how well your company culture supports the four essential ingredients of effectiveness, where the opportunities for improvement really lie, and how to prioritise improvement activities. To ensure pruning does not stunt or even kill the plant, it is vital to take such an objective health-check of your system of work before instigating major cutbacks.

Periodic use of the Diagnostic enables you to track your Rightshifting journey and demonstrate continuous improvement in the effectiveness of your day-to-day operations.

Software Measurement

Effective use of relevant and visible metrics is essential to the management of successful change and improvement programmes. It is a well known saying that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it, and this is no less true of software performance.

SMS provides services and advice on how to use functional sizing methods to improve software development productivity, time-to-market, quality and functionality. Effective use of Benchmarking provides comparative project performance data, and information on ease-of-use and cost-to-implement which can be used to:

• prepare a business case for improvement.
• establish a baseline
• identify and prioritise opportunities for improvement
• demonstrate added value delivered by improvement activity
• quantify supplier performance
• size requirements, and therefore base estimates on user needs and expectations;
• improve quality control and change management of requirements;
• plan projects and track progress with respect to the functionality required, delivered and/or changed;
• normalise performance and product quality measures (e.g. Productivity is expressed as <Size Delivered/Effort Expended>; Velocity is expressed as <Size Delivered/Time To Deliver>; Defect Density is expressed as <#Defects/Size> – all these metrics need a measure of functional size as a key input).

Assessing Capability

We offer assessment of the capabillity to develop, maintain and support systems based on or containing software. We use all the widely accepted Models, Standards and Methods, including CMMI^®, ISO , ITIL and SPICE. We also provide auditing of in-house functional size measurement capabilities, e.g. Functional Sizing Audits, and a Document Discovery service to help find, collate and review documents, process and design assets.

We can provide training and appraisals through our partnerships with SEI Authorised Transition Partners, and SEI Authorised Trainer, Roger Gamage.

Contact training@measuresw.com for details tel. +44 (0)843 289 5174.

SEI Capability Maturity Model CMMI^®

ISO and ITIL

Capability can be assessed against one - or more - industry models as well as an organisation’s own process standards. As well as Formal Assessments SMS can conduct audits and investigations to help client organisations achieve compliance with industry models:

Once an assessment has been completed, an experienced SMS mentor will work with project teams to implement any changes necessary to achieve the desired standard. Additional SMS resources can be made available to provide expertise as required, from function point analysts to interim managers.

SMS can also offer expertise in other industry models: TickIT, CoBIT, SPICE, Automotive SPICE, Six Sigma, etc.

Functional Sizing Audits

Document Discovery

Prior to a Capability Assessment, all existing process documentation must be identified, collated and reviewed. The review looks for coverage of process against industry best practice and process models. The process documentation includes not only definitions of the processes but also deliverables showing they are being followed. It may also include measurements of the software processes as they were being performed.

Before a Functional Sizing Audit, a similar exercise can be performed to identify appropriate design artefacts. It is useful to have not only those artefacts which were used for the original analysis, but others which can be used as an alternative source for verification.

Service Relationship Diagram

Each type of assessment is based on the model or method against which it is conducted. Where appropriate documentation has not already been identified and organised into some form of repository, an assessment may be preceded by Document Discovery.