Conference Presentations

eXtreme Programming Meets Measurement

With the Internet explosion creating new "e-somethings" daily, and society embracing X-anything, it should come as no surprise that eXtreme Programming is the latest concept to hit IT. Forget the visions of IT managers projecting themselves off a cliff with bungee cords and a laptop-eXtreme Programming is more mainstream than renegade, offering a mixture of old and new, tried and true all bundled into one. Learn what eXtreme Programming is all about and how it differs from other development methodologies. Discover what can and should be measured in an eXtreme Programming environment and how to fit X-Measures in with a regular measurement program.

Carol Dekkers, Quality Plus Technologies, Inc.
Is That Your Final Answer? Auditing Your Measurement Program

More and more organizations are committed to establishing an effective measurement program. Big or small, measurement takes time and resources. The overriding key to measurement program success is accuracy. Organizations with established metrics programs typically institutionalize an audit activity to maximize their investment. Explore the current approaches being used to audit measurement activity. Learn why auditing is so important, and what and when to audit within your organization.

David Herron, The David Consulting Group
System Test Measurement-What, When, How?

Elaine Soat presents an easy set of measurements to use during system testing (QA test cycle). Examine measurements taken from defect tracking and application coverage to projected testing hours versus actual testig hours. Learn how such process and measurement information is evaluated and used for proposed process improvements. Gain the ability to do comparison reporting to measure successes of process improvement within your QA test cycle.

Elain Soat, CarteGraph Systems
Using Statistics to Evaluate Process Improvement

The techniques associated with Statistical Process Control (SPC) are very useful, but they are not sufficient alone to
provide inferential comparisons. An additional need is the ability to make valid
comparisons.
This paper suggests two additional techniques to help evaluate differences: inference for
difference between two means (using t tests and confidence intervals for the difference
between the means), and inference for two way tables (using chi-square tests). These basic
statistical techniques should be in our analysis toolbox, along with the traditional SPC tools.

Paul Below, EDS
Estimating Software Productivity and Quality on Large Systems

Estimating productivity (e.g., lines of source code developed per hour) and quality (e.g., code defect rates) are difficult on large software projects that involve several companies or sites, emphasize reuse of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components or adaptation of legacy code, and require open architectures. Using actual metrics from such software development projects, this paper illustrates problems encountered and lessons learned when measuring productivity and quality. These include: how to count different types of code; effects of lengthy development times on productivity/quality; variability
between estimates obtained from different models; and tracking and reporting metrics on productivity/quality for projects based on incremental or evolutionary development.

Jack Alanen, California State University
Statistical Process Control (SPC) for Software Inspections

Attempts to create user-friendly statistical process control (SPC) charts for software inspections often have
failed. A principle cause of these problems is the failure to recognize the asymmetric distributions of the
critical control variables, and to incorporate this fact into control chart design. This paper provides innovative guidelines for inspections SPC.

Don Porter, Motorola
Software Metrics "State of the Practice"

In this session, Peter Kulik presents the results of KLCI's third industry survey on software metrics usage conducted in the fourth quarter of 2000. Based on feedback from practitioners, you will explore topics such as metrics usage and best practices, tips to enhance metrics programs, strategies to implement and improve a metrics program, and tools favored to support metrics capture and analysis.

Peter Kulik, KLCI, Inc.
Effort Tracking Made Easy

Tracking effort is often a difficult cultural change to implement. Projects working toward Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level two behaviors struggle with effort tracking for many reasons, including tool restrictions, resistance, and complicated processes. Lynn Cole shares insight and techniques that she has both successfully implemented and seen implemented by others. Discover the simple steps that you can take to start capturing and using effort data about a project.

Lynn Cole, Spherion Technology Architects
A New Approach for Estimating in e-Business Development

In order to control the costs and schedules of new eBusiness development projects, a revolution in estimation and the software lifecycle must take place. Learn how the Fixed-Time/Fixed-Price estimation model of delivering software provides you with more business benefit as it reduces the new development environment to duplicable, repeatable processes and more accurate costs and time projections. Discover how this new model can increase the delivery of projects on time-and on budget-by a factor of sixty to seventy percent!

David Duncan, Cambridge Technology Partners

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