Costs down – quality up: productivity in software development is a triad of development standards, automation and reuse.

In my article “Individual Standard: Mass Customization in Software Development” I pointed out how optimization potentials can be exploited by reusing fine-granular business and technical components. Here, the development of a travel management system served as an example with a total of 2,286 man days saved. Considering this impressive figure, the question arises: To what extent can the productivity in the development of individual systems be increased?

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Developed from practice to practice: Today I present the second book of my series “Increasing Productivity of Software Development”. Topics are the application, evaluation and optimization of the KPIs productivity, costs and quality.

While the first book figured out experiences with different measuring methods, my second book entitled “Management Model, Cost Estimation and KPI Improvement” describes a management model based on key performance indicators. Continue reading 

Complex requirements, ever shorter development periods and increasing cost pressure – productivity is an issue of increasing importance in software development. This is the starting point for my book project “Productivity and Performance Measurement – Measurability and Methods”.

As Head of the Competence Center Project Governance, I am responsible for the process engineering for software development at PASS. For several years we have been using key performance indicators as a major information source of our IT management – in more than ten different application environments with more than 500 customers and approx. 250,000 users. In some areas our regularly measured KPIs show significantly higher delivery productivity. Continue reading 

Industrialization vs. individualization = mass vs. individual production – an equation which has largely lost its validity today. In the industrial sector as well as in software development the future belongs to customized mass production (mass customization).

For a long time, mass production allowed an optimum utilization of operating assets and thus higher quantities, shorter delivery times and lower product prices than individual production which is rather characterized by more attractive and usable products. Continue reading 

Cost estimation methods must be quickly applicable – even without expert knowledge – to plan and control development projects reliably.

Recently in a development project in Aschaffenburg:

In order to plan the team size necessary for developing a new release in due time, a cost estimation is required. A colleague decides to perform an expert estimation. Continue reading