Software Engineering Institute

For program managers to effectively manage and control software development, they need to incorporate a measurement process into their decision making and reporting process. Measurement costs money, but it can also save money through early problem detection and objective clarification of critical software development issues. This report provides some basic concepts that program managers can use to help integrate measurement into the process for managing software development. It also provides an initial set of measures to help address common issues in software intensive acquisitions. 

When the Software Acquisition Metrics Working Group first met in 1989, only a few reports existed on the subject of how program managers could use software measurement; now, other reports have been written. The goal of this report is not to compete with those reports, but to use them as starting points for expansion. This report should be viewed not as a standard, but as containing guidelines and advice for program officers and managers starting to use software measurement in their own organizations.