As Lord Kelvin wrote more than 100 years ago, decision-making is difficult without quantitative data to support the decisions. Many organizations find they cannot answer basic questions about their software activities like these:
Organizations that cannot answer these questions almost certainly fall to the left side of Figure 13-2. Many organizations have never asked questions such as these and are only vaguely aware that they should be asking such questions. Considering that the business case for better software practices is so compelling, perhaps the 11th tough question should be, "What's keeping us from using better software practices now that we have seen this data?" |