Top Software Development Metrics To Increase The Projects’ Success
If you have a team of developers in your company, it is essential for you to understand how their performance affects the projects’ outcomes.
Besides, it is crucial to be able to assess the level of the employees’ engagement in the development process and see whether there is something that can be changed to improve that. Often, teams face software development projects’ ineffectiveness and low quality.
However, it is quite challenging to determine the issue at a single glance and make a confident decision when it comes to a project outsourcing where there are thousands of code lines. That’s when metrics for measuring the development process get down to business. Qubit Labs has decided to dig deeper into this term to figure out why software metrics are sought-after in the IT world.
What Exactly are Software Development Metrics?
Before moving further, let’s elucidate the term itself. Briefly saying, software metrics are the measurements applied to better understand the team’s efficiency and effectiveness, customer satisfaction, development lifecycle and quality of the software output. They provide the opportunity to base the decisions on objective evidence rather than personal opinion or feelings. Usually, companies implement software development metrics to achieve various targets, like:
- Determining the strong and weak sides of the specialists
- Decreasing the projects’ cost-effectiveness
- Improving the levels of clients satisfaction
- Creating effective marketing strategies
- Setting priorities
- Sorting data
- Controlling progress
The benefits of software metrics should not be underestimated because it often happens when businesses evaluate their employees’ performance based on whether they meet deadlines or personal views. Although, in some cases, this might still be effective, using objective data will bring you more clarity. It is not always up to the team, whether they can achieve set goals because the influence of third parties is also present.
Unfortunately, some companies look at the projects’ outcomes to see whether the developers have met their requirements. In most cases, if the project fails, business owners prefer to find new engineers rather than get down to the heart of the matter. That’s the moment when they make the existing issues even more critical, even without realizing that. In their turn, development metrics allow to take each stage of the project into attention and avoid neglecting crucial details.
In general, IT metrics can be divided into three categories, which include:
- Product metrics, which describe the product’s characteristics, like size complexity, performance, design, and quality level.
- Process metrics, which can be applied for the improvement of the development activities and software maintenance.
- Project metrics, which describe the project’s features and performance, like the number of developers, costs, schedule, and productivity.
When to Use Software Quality Metrics and What are the Metrics Examples?
These are the subsets of software engineering metrics that are more about the quality of process and product than the project in general. They can also be divided into categories, including:
- Metrics of products’ quality
- Quality indicators in the process
- Metrics of service quality
How do you know that one of the types of development metrics will help address your particular project’s issues? It is usually defined by your goals, ideas, services, and a multitude of other factors. The mentioned categories contain several other features that might become game-changers for your project; let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Metrics of Products’ Quality
- Average time until failure
It is necessary to know this indicator because it shows the time between failures. It can help to increase the product’s security.
- The bugs density
It measures defects according to software size, which is expressed by code lines or functional points. This one is critical for eCommerce software.
- Customer issues
It evaluates the issues faced by clients when they implement the product. This method includes the client’s side of view on the software’s problematic aspect, which includes defective issues. There is a metric, called PUM, that is usually counted for each month after the software has been launched.
- Client satisfaction
There is a five-point scale based on which one can estimate customer satisfaction, which is achieved by various questionnaires for the clients. One can apply the received data to count the percentage of fully satisfied or unsatisfied customers and analyze the product’s strengths and weaknesses.
Quality indicators in the process
- The bugs density under computer testing
This point allows detecting any issues in the process of testing, which is useful for monitoring the subsequent product releases.
- The scheme of bugs appearance during computer testing
It is crucial for organizations to see whether the workload is connected to the defects. In case the backlog is considerable, the system’s stability will be affected because there will be several adjustments that have to be integrated into the system.
- The scheme of addressing bugs based on phase
A large percent of program defects are related to project issues. To eliminate them, it is practical to hold testing to enhance the process’s capacities and eliminate the flaws in the external interface, which reduces the number of failures in the software.
- The effectiveness of bugs’ elimination
The higher are the indicators of these software performance metrics, the lesser bugs are going to be transmitted to other stages.
Metrics of service quality
- Fixing lag and lag management index
Often, there are bugs related to the waiting time, and this metric can help to manage the backlog of unsolved issues.
- Fixing response time and reaction
Metrics management in this area is also connected to the response time, which affects customer satisfaction to a significant extent. It is usually calculated based on the average time from opening to solving issues.
- Fixing quality
Software development projects might seem perfect at first sight, yet certain issues might emerge in the process of utilization. In these means, the developers’ significant task is to address them within the shortest possible period because the longer the project is modified, the more the clients are affected by it.
To Wrap Up
Thus, we have reviewed some of the most popular software development metrics, which, when applied correctly, can significantly increase your project’s outcomes and make it more competitive. Nevertheless, it would be more efficient to implement the software engineering metrics, which will be tailored to your business and help achieve the goals you set.
Qubit Labs will be glad to help you out and find the most excellent solution according to your needs. Feel free to contact us so we can take a fresh look at your project together.
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