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