Sleep Better at Night: A Release Confidence Metric

A project manager decides a product is good enough to release-that it will be successful in the marketplace or the business. The manager is basing this judgment on confidence in the product. Confidence is a simple word, yet it is an extraordinarily intangible measure. Confidence drives a huge number of software releases each day. Can our confidence be quantified? Can it be measured? Terry Morrish thinks so and shares a formula for measuring release confidence by combining measures from the current development cycle with those of the past releases and from client feedback. The Release Confidence metric can help predict the number of clients who will be affected by post-release problems and how much time and money will be spent on maintenance and rework. By employing this approach, project managers can have a quantitative picture of release risk, providing for a more informed decision process-and a better night's sleep.