THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY

It takes a long time to move organizations up the maturity ladder or to get them fully functional as ISO 9001 companies. The entire organization has to change the way it works, and organizations move slowly. If you work in a company that is not interested in IEEE 12207 or CMMI®, there are limits to what you will initially be able to accomplish. For example, many high-maturity, program-level measures require coordinating data across departments, and it is unlikely that you will be able to get this data early in your efforts.

Nonetheless, you should approach your software measurement effort as if it were a company-wide effort. You are obviously the first and most important user of your measures, and your choice of measures and measurement points should improve your chances of success. But your success will be just the beginning. Your peer project managers will want to adopt your best practices. Senior management will want to see more of the quantitative data you are using to manage your project in real time. What starts out as a means to get you through the project might well blossom into a company-wide effort. So plan accordingly:

1. Architect the effort, establishing measurement hierarchies and interdependencies. (Chapter 2 will take you through one such architecture.)

2. Design the effort, so you know why and when you want to collect data. (Chapters 3 and 4 will describe the measures, how they interrelate, and when to collect them.)

3. Use the measures. (Chapters 4 through 6 will guide you through interpreting and displaying the data, and Chapter 6 will offer several examples of using measurement information to solve typical development project problems.)