Simple Metrics for Starters

Measurements and metrics are a hot topic again. Theorists often rail against them as meaningless and potentially harmful. Practitioners fear them because they don’t want to be metric-ed out of a job. Managers want them so they can better understand what is happening in the software development lifecycle and try to make their processes more efficient. David Gilbert shares the simple set of measurements and metrics Raymond James has implemented and describes the practical benefits they have gained. By first asking stakeholders what they really wanted to understand and then developing metrics to support their goals, David and his team have made measurement work at their company. They educated the stakeholders on key metrics concepts-first order measures and subjective relativity-and established a common model everyone agreed to follow. David shares their metrics model which, though imperfect, has helped their managers and organization to do a better job every day.