ROI of Software Process Improvement - Metrics for Project Managers and Software Engineers

DAVID F. RICO

Foreword by Dr. Roger S. Pressman

Copyright 2004 by J. Ross Publishing, Inc.

ISBN 1-932159-24-X

Printed and bound in the U.S.A. Printed on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Capability Maturity Model and CMM are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Capability Maturity Model Integration and CMMI are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Personal Software Process ^SM and PSP ^SM are service marks of Carnegie Mellon University. Team Software Process ^SM and TSP ^SM are service marks of Carnegie Mellon University.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 Rico, David F., 1964-   ROI of software process improvement : metrics for project managers and software engineers / David F. Rico.        p. cm. 

ISBN 1-932159-24-X

1. Computer software ”Development. I. Title.

QA76.76.D47 R56 2004

005.1 ”dc22 2003019248

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my loving wife, Celia. She is the rock of my life, my guiding light, and my inspiration. This book is also dedicated to my children, David, Serena, Faith, and Christian. May they overcome the obstacles of this world and easily obtain the desires of their hearts. And, of course, to countless generations of my family, who laid an ever so gradual foundation for future success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David F. Rico is an itinerant technical leader for software process and quality improvement. He is internationally recognized for helping prestigious organizations become accredited and compliant with CMMI , SW-CMM , and ISO 9001, 15288, and 12207. His strength is helping fiercely resistant and resource-constrained organizations achieve fast and measurable benefits and accreditation.

Mr. Rico has advanced skills with state-of-the-art methods and tools for designing software engineering policies, procedures, standards, and processes. His capabilities include motivational lectures, program diagnosis, economic justification, strategic planning, program management, appraisals , life cycle design, compliance analysis, training, software metrics and models, quality assurance, and configuration management. His expertise consists of using earned value management and reliability models to design quantitative project and quality management systems.

Mr. Rico specializes in cost and benefit, return on investment, net present value, and breakeven point analysis for software process improvement and project portfolio management. He designed a cost and benefit study of eight major software process improvement methods which was distributed by the European Software Institute, Netherlands Software Engineering Research Center, and the U.S. DTIC/AFRL-IF Data and Analysis Center for Software. He authored an e-book on return on investment which was downloaded over 30,000 times in its first few weeks, and he has published numerous articles on return on investment which have been published in TickIT, SEPG, ICSPI, SPIder Koerier, Software TechNews, and ISPA/SCEA. His Web site (http://davidfrico.com) attracts 250,000 visitors a month from 75 countries .

Mr. Rico has led, managed, and participated in over 15 SW-CMM Level 2, 3, 4, and 5 initiatives for NASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, DISA, DARPA, Japanese firms, and some of the most prestigious U.S. high-technology corporations. He helped capture a $250 million software engineering modernization contract for NASA, design the spacecraft software for NASA's $20 billion space station, and achieve SW-CMM and ISO 9001 accreditation for Japan's largest computer company at $40 billion. He helped modernize a family of U.S. Air Force static radar ranges, reengineer 36 military logistics depots in Cairo, Egypt, and design a $30 billion constellation of U.S. Air Force satellites . He helped conduct a $42 million U.S. Navy source selection, design a cost model for distributing $70 million to 37 U.S. Navy aircraft programs including F-18 and F-14, and implement engineering management practices for leading-edge DISA and DARPA high-technology initiatives. He helped the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Center, an $87 million U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) information technology center, and a $25 million electrical engineering center of excellence to achieve SW-CMM accreditation. He recently managed a multimillion-dollar software engineering training curriculum for hundreds of computer programmers, spearheaded an initiative to measure the return on investment of institutional software engineering training, and is helping integrate multiple families of enterprise architectures for a multibillion-dollar U.S. government agency.

Mr. Rico has been an international keynote speaker, published numerous articles, and completed SW-CMM and CMMI introductory and intermediate training. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S.A. in Software Engineering and has been in the field of computer programming since 1983.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to personally thank Jason Handy, Byon Williams, and Julie Garrard of Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. (http://www.kbsi.com) for donating the world's best IDEFO modeling tool to support this project, AI0 WIN . I would also like to thank Thomas McGibbon, whose works have been inspirational and whose personal support and encouragement have been critical to the formation of the concepts in this book. Last, but not least, I want to thank Kyle Y. Rone for introducing me to quantitative concepts in software process improvement and framing the context for my entire professional career.