ABSTRACT
How can one tell if a team is being productive during the development of software? While the productivity of the development process should be monitored during project development, it is best to calculate productivity at the end of the project. The projects discussed in this chapter performed iterations, with each iteration being monitored. The purpose of this monitoring was to identify the productivity of the teams during the phases of developing the project. The following activity groups were monitored: requirements, analysis, design, implementation, and test. In the development process, actions, roles, and artifacts are grouped into defined groups of activities that meet a certain goal in the development cycle of a project. For example, activities related to requirements are grouped into a set called “requirements.” Other sets are analysis, design, construction, and test. By measuring the productivity of these activity groups, it was possible to identify weaknesses in the implementation process and determine which ones needed to be modified to realize continuous improvement. To accomplish this, we developed a tracking spreadsheet that showed all the data functions and transactional sizes per use case. For each activity group of development, the process of development stipulated what percentage of the project’s total effort would be expended. With this percentage, you can set the slices of Function Points (FPs) for each activity group for each use case. This spreadsheet was deployed to members of the team who developed the activities of each activity group, requiring them to record the amount of hours that they used. Knowing the size and effort allowed for the determination of the productivity of each activity group of the cycle, by 707use case. This same sheet was used to determine the consolidated values of average productivity per activity group of the development cycle. This work is based on an actual experiment in a real project of high complexity. It is an excellent opportunity to show how we can during the life of a software project improve its development process based on metrics. The project used the indicator of productivity, because it is easy to apply and understand. This chapter is divided into the following sections: Introduction; Scenario and Motivation; Analyzing the Indicator of Productivity during the Development Process; Improving the Development Process; Summary; About the Author.
