Establishing an Organization-wide Project Performance Baseline

Performance measurements have now become a mainstream management practice in many, often large, development organizations. Equally important to establishing strategic goals and objectives is identifying an appropriate set of measures to provide quantitative evidence that those goals and objectives are being achieved. David Garmus describes a project performance baseline that can be implemented throughout your organization or at the department level across multiple projects. These measurements must be matched to the business needs of stakeholders, not to the technical aspects of the project and process. For increased learning, measurements must be compared among projects, departments, divisions, or the entire organization. While quantitative measures are preferred, qualitative measures can also be very useful. Finally, the results of all process improvement initiatives must be measured to determine if those initiatives achieved their business and financial goals.

• Why measurement is critical to software organizations
• How to select the best measures based on business needs
• Steps to start a measurement program with project baselines