Most software leaders who are responsible for multiple development or DevOps teams need insight into the relative and absolute productivity of those teams.
A team productivity assessment can also help future work prioritisation decisions. Software leaders need a reliable basis for estimating and costing planned work initiatives so that they can make sound decisions about prioritisation. Such decisions need to balance value vs likely cost and time. Expected value is often fairly easy for business analysts to determine whereas a reliable estimate of the software delivery cost is usually illusive. Cost estimates tend to be wrong and often significantly so, thus undermining the decision’s initial premise.
A solution to this problem is to perform a team productivity assessment in order to determine the objective productivity measure of a software team. The foundation of the assessment is the use of a standardised basis for sizing software. Story points and t-shirt sizing are too easily manipulated, we recommend an ISO standard metric for software functional size (the COSMIC Function Point).
The assessment, performed by ScopeMaster consultant(s) will involve interviews and work inspections and will consider:
- The functional output of up to 10 recent sprints using industry standard objective measures,
- Assessment of rework activity within each sprint.
- Quality considerations of the software produced.
- Other factors (domain, complexity, tech debt, interruptions, tools, skills, biases and more)
- If an electronic extract of the user stories is provided, the report will also include the output of the automated requirements analysis by the ScopeMaster tool, that will give an indication of requirements quality too.
The output of the assessment will be a short report and presentation that covers:
- An objective quantification of the productivity of the team (usually in CFP per sprint, at a stated quality level).
- Factors observed that are negatively and/or positively affecting team productivity.
- Opportunities for improving productivity.
- Comparison with industry benchmarks.
The assessment is usually initiated by IT leadership. A successful assessment requires proactive support from the client’s leaders to ensure that our consultants have full access to the team and their work.
Business Case for An Assessment
Most software teams represent a costly ongoing commitment. Without an objective, ungame-able productivity measure, it is very hard for leaders to know if they are getting good value for this investment.
The assessment, which typically takes just 5-8 days, is likely to provide insight that can lead to a monthly improvement in output of 10% or more within 1-3 months of the assessment. Within the first year, the assessment should pay for itself several times over.
