Software project measurement criteria

The consensus of opinion of a sample of Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) management and engineering staff is that projects containing software products have proved difficult to deliver to programme and within budget. This fact is further exasperated when a particular supplier does not subscribe to a "mature" software development process (SDP), thereby failing to either sustain consistency in the application or provide the client with visibility of progress throughout the development and manufacturing process. The introduction of standard SDPs has recently become an integral part of many contract specifications. This development has provided a defined measure of visibility of the SDP to the client. Software is of a nebulous composition, as opposed to being a physical commodity which can be visibly "measured". The quality of the software product is therefore deemed analogous to the processes adopted during production. The result is that the SDP can be ameliorated to formulate a framework for establishing a robust set of measurement criteria. This paper describes the approach adopted by MTRC in measuring the progress of a safety-related software-intensive development project. It should be noted however, that the exercise described in this paper is not constrained to software development, and the methodology can be adapted to measure any phase, element or activity of any project.