10.8 DEFINE DATA COLLECTION MECHANISMS

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Before you even think about going live with your program, try to have as many of the bases covered as possible. It is very tempting to instruct a project team to supply you with effort, defect and size data without telling them how to do it.

Remember, these people are software developers. That is what they are paid to do and that is what the organization wants them to do. If you want them to do something new, then help them to do it as much as you possibly can. You should define forms (with their input of course); you should tell them how often they should forward information; you should design the analysis techniques. At the very least this means that you get a measure of consistency. It can also mean the difference between a program that works and a program that fails.

This does not mean that you should do this definition task in isolation. On the contrary, you want them to be involved and to accept what is given to them but help them as much as you can.

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