This article explains earned value management and explores how the metric can be used to improve project and business processes.

When we deliver software products, we need to be able to tell our customers what they're getting. Not only product documentation, but specifically, every time we deliver a new release we need to relay what problems were fixed and what new features were added. If the software is subject to periodic audits, we need to tell them even more, especially the abiltiy to trace a requirement or change request to what was changed.

Linda Hayes has always found software development metrics to be problematic. The data either skews perceptions of the project or the actions of the team members. In this article, Linda explains that by turning down the volume of what is being said and measured and simply watching what is actually happening, you can strip away the assumptions and biases that often obscure the truth.

Service Desks traditionally serve the operational and production aspects of IT organizations and their respective business units.  However, business services that consist of applications typically start their lifecycle as requirements from the originating business unit, then follow a development lifecycle before entering the operations realm.  This development lifecycle
is commonly a blind spot for service desks manifesting most typically via an incident logged against an application in production requiring maintenance or upgrade work to be completed by development.