Database now includes more than 13,000 completed projects
MCLEAN, VA, May 17, 2017 – Quantitative Software Management, Inc. (QSM), a leader in software development estimation and enterprise portfolio and resource demand management analytics, today announced a major update to its software project database. With this update, QSM has validated and added more than 2,500 projects to the database in 9 major application domains (Avionics, IT, Command & Control, Microcode, Process Control, Real Time, Scientific, System Software, and Telecom) and 45 sub-domains, resulting in a database of more than 13,000 completed projects.
With this update, the number of agile projects in the database increased by 340 percent, resulting in some changes to the agile trend line. Specifically:
- The median size of agile projects decreased by 80 percent.
- Average team sizes for agile projects were higher across the board, and project duration was shorter for all but the largest projects. For smaller agile projects, using larger teams was somewhat effective in reducing schedules, but schedule compression diminished for larger, scaled agile projects.
- For agile projects up to 30,000 lines of code, productivity was higher than the previous trend. Again, the smallest projects saw the biggest productivity gains.
- Finally, agile projects reported dramatically fewer pre-release defects than the previous trend group, but quality at delivery (or mean time to defect) was also lower. This suggests agile teams may be trading off quality for faster time to market.
Though projects were added across application domains, the majority of the new projects added were in the IT application domain, which includes the agile projects. Overall, IT project sizes declined by 25 percent.
“QSM clients will now benefit from the most up-to-date software project benchmarking data, particularly in the agile domain,” said Larry Putnam, Jr., co-CEO, QSM. “QSM has the largest continuously-updated software project performance metrics database in the world. Development organizations, project managers and CIOs rely on our database to measure the effectiveness of their teams and the feasibility of planned projects.”
Since 1978, QSM has been aggregating software project data in order to provide clients with benchmark data, develop better predictive algorithms and to serve as source for the 17 trend lines in its flagship products, the SLIM Suite of tools.
Additional Resources
- Download the QSM Software Almanac: 2017 Edition
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About Quantitative Software Management, Inc. (QSM)
Founded in 1978 by one of the pioneers of software measurement, Larry Putnam, Sr., QSM offers estimation products and consulting that enable federal and commercial clients to estimate, track and benchmark projects. QSM tools and methods help software and systems analysts negotiate achievable goals, set realistic expectations, and communicate more effectively with management and customers. QSM offers the SLIM (Software Lifecycle Management) Suite of tools, which contains metrics from a worldwide database of more than 13,000 completed projects, enabling productivity benchmarking on the desktop. Using SLIM to dynamically run 'virtual project simulations,' companies can model and forecast project releases to deliver on time, within budget with > 90% estimation accuracy. Visit us at www.qsm.com.