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Typical triggers for a measurement program
The impact of ownership (technical versus business)
Setting up your measurement team
Getting past the first hurdles
This is the first point that we start to see the customers we, as the developers and implementors of a measurement program, will have to serve. This orientation, almost fixation, on the customer angle that you will find running through this section, has its basis in reality. Too often, measurement initiatives fail because they are developed in ivory towers totally removed from the software engineering environment or the people involved in that metrics program development pay lip service to the concept of customer service and then proceed to ignore that interface.
If you remember nothing else then remember that your purpose is to make things better for others within your organization. The organization, with its many facets, is your customer. The organization does not exist for your benefit or for the benefit of your measurement program..
Having said all that, this is also the first point that you begin to realize what you may have let yourself in for. I have a theory that people are appointed to Software Metrics teams when they are ill, on leave or absent from Having said all that, this is also the first point that you begin to realize what you may have let yourself in for. I have a theory that people are appointed to Software Metrics teams when they are ill, on leave or absent from work for some other reason. Surely nobody actually asks to join this bunch of madmen and madwomen who, for some strange reason, actually seem to enjoy trying to do the impossible, for the ungrateful, with practically no resources!
And it all starts with the initiation stage of the process. Figure 8.1 contains some detail about this and the format I will adopt is that you get the picture early and we can then discuss things in text. As the diagram shows, everything starts somewhere, even Software Metrics programs.
Figure 8.1: Initiation Stage of a Software Metrics Program
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