Overview of support services offered by SMS

Supporting Success – Perfecting Process Performance

Many organisations struggle to implement and sustain software measurement programmes that deliver any real value. There are all sorts of contributing factors: e.g. low levels of management understanding & support over time; poor integration with ‘business as usual’; a focus on ‘delivery to schedule’ by project managers; failure to recognise all the stakeholders; being too complicated too early; being too simplistic, leading to low credibility; …the list is endless. Whatever the specific reasons, the fact is that the majority of measurement programmes last less than 24 months from inception to cancellation.

Apart from the waste this represents, as measurement is crucial to the ability to improve performance, it also serves as a significant drag on organisational change. Most organisations are unlikely to achieve lasting performance improvements without a sustained, successful, measurement regime.

At SMS we believe that measurement and improvement are ‘two sides of one coin’; so we want to ensure that our clients do succeed with their adoption, implementation and continued use of software measurement.

Observations suggest that the most effective use of measurement is in providing in-line indicators and rapid feedback on process performance, making status and progress visible to all those involved in the value stream. It is the active use of measurement by creative, client-facing staff that makes the difference. Senior management review of so-called ‘key performance indicators’ (KPI) can help stimulate use, but all too often these KPI are somehow disconnected from day-to-day practice. This can lead to dysfunctional behaviour, especially where ‘measurement targets’ are mistaken for the true ‘business goals’. Over time, experience has taught SMS that successful adoption of methods such as COSMIC, the IFPUG & MkII FPA methods, GQ[I]M, COCOMO.II.2000, and other estimating techniques, etc. is rarely achieved by providing training only in the form of courses such as the typical 2 day formal class. Recognising this, SMS has developed a broader approach to more effectively transfer knowledge into an organization.

SMS Knowledge Transfer Services

SMS’ approach consists of a set of education & training products that collectively provide support over time, to all the relevant audiences, to establish and sustain the use of the relevant methods. This approach to the transfer of knowledge (TOK) has been trialled in various organisations and consists of:

• Formal Classes (usually 2 days – to introduce participants to new concepts and practices using ‘typical’ examples & exercises)
• Coached Workshops (ideally 3 days – to help participants apply newly learnt skills & procedures in their real-life environment, to their real projects and problems, generating valuable measurements to establish baselines and useful reference datasets)
• Health-Checks and Formal Audits (usually 2 or more days, at a rate of about one half-day per project team, to provide QC/QA feedback re: conformance to recognised standards, assurance of the results achieved, corrective actions, identification of additional training needs, etc.)
• Technical Clinic (usually 1 day – during a clinic practitioners raise their specific problems for discussion and resolution with a subject matter expert, usually on a one-to-one basis)
• Advanced Skills Workshops (usually 2 days – to guide participants in the use of the data they have learned to collect – Advanced Workshops usually are targeted at specific audiences e.g.: developers & testers; project managers; bid-team members; procurement specialists)
• MetricsMentor Support Service – this service provides ‘help desk’ style support to individual practitioners and project teams – MetricsMentor provides an internet-based service powered by MS-Sharepoint and enables users to raise ‘Service Requests’ that are resolved promptly by subject matter experts
• Executive Learning Break – this is a 2 hour education session for senior executives and programme managers; it identifies the kind of business goals that measurement and improvement methods are designed to satisfy, explaining their context and use, without going into the fine-grained detail
• Knowledge Network Learning Breaks – these 2 hour education sessions are tailored to a variety of audiences, ranging from those involved in Procurement and/or Bid-Teams, through Architects, Project Managers, and other specialist areas
• Exam Preparation Workshops – FPA practitioners who are building experience in order to take the relevant certification examinations can take advantage of SMS expertise by participating in one of these Exam Preparation Workshops – coaching is run over 3 days and the one morning immediately preceding the exam held in the afternoon

Training to implement & sustain a measurement & improvement programme

The training programme necessary to support the introduction of measurement is constructed so that the participants in each Formal Class participate as quickly as possible thereafter in a Coached Workshops. Often it proves convenient to run a formal class on a Monday and Tuesday, and the associated workshop on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the same week. Those involved then return to their usual roles, but integrate the knowledge and new procedures into their daily tasks, making use of the baselines and data they have generated during the workshop.

Technical Clinics that enable individual practitioners (developers and/or project managers) to resolve specific problems with a subject matter expert provide further support and ensure the new methods are embedded in custom & practice. These can be scheduled on-demand, or to a schedule that provides a stimulus to programme every few weeks.

A short Health-Check, usually of 2 to 3 days depending on the number of projects involved, should be conducted some 8 –12 weeks after a group’s initial education & training. This provides assurance that use of the new skills is conformant to the relevant standards, and that the results obtained are valid. The health-check is designed to be a cooperative exercise, aimed at helping the practitioner to avoid mistakes and improve accuracy and precision.

In situations where there is a customer–supplier relationship (e.g. where software development is outsourced) and where there are commercial arrangements dependent on the measurement results, the health-check can take the form of a ‘Formal Audit’ that produces a report more on behalf of the customer, and can thus take a somewhat more ‘adversarial’ form.

Formal classes and coached workshops give new practitioners a thorough grounding in how to use a measurement method and how to collect required data in a systematic and repeatable way.

SMS’ Advanced Skills Workshops provide a suitable means for exploring the full potential of metrics to improve process performance. Individuals performing a range of different roles (e.g. project manager, bid team member, quality manager, performance improvement specialist, CXO-level executive), will want to analyse data, and make use of data, in different ways. Advanced Skills Workshops can be tailored to suit the needs of a variety of stakeholders. They cover all the possible different uses that the measurement results can be put to and the various ways of analysing the data.

The MetricsMentor Support Service provides a help desk facility, dedicated to practitioners at a specific organisation, enabling users to raise Service Requests concerning specific issues relating to their project or their personal use of measurement techniques, and to obtain a resolution from a subject matter expert within a few hours. Where a specific Service Request concerns some issue of wide concern, or if it is organisational in nature, then the MetricsMentor service makes provision to arrange a teleconference or other meeting involving a group of the affected stakeholders, in order to reach a suitable resolution.

The training regime illustrated in Figure 1 typically has been focused on development staff, engineers, project team leaders, etc. engaged with specific projects those individuals who will use the analysis and measurement methods and related techniques in a project context. Sometimes a client organisation assigns a few individuals to receive training and to provide services to projects from a central group. Our experience shows that in practice such folk are over-extended, poorly resourced, and generally find it a struggle to provide and sustain the momentum necessary to institutionalise measurement & analysis. An organisation aiming at high-maturity will find it easier to institutionalise good practice if they provide appropriate training to all relevant staff.