Determinants of success in software measurement programs: initial results

While a great deal is known about technical issues of data gathering and applied statistics, less is known about what it takes to implement a successful software measurement program. Indeed, a good deal of anecdotal evidence suggests that such efforts often fail. In this paper, we report the initial results from a large-scale survey of practitioners and users of software measurement programs. A preliminary multivariate analysis examines differences in the use of software measurement results in organizational decision making. Three variables (alignment with intended users, management commitment and use of analytic methods) account for two thirds of the observed variance.