Technology Business Management is a trending approach to help bridge the gap between IT functions and the C-suite. But TBM is missing an important component: consistent metric of software size.

The key to valid conversations about software governance is adoption of a consistent metric for size. Technology leadership has done a poor job of providing executives and boards with meaningful concepts and metrics for achievement of business value and risk management through IT.

Sizing software in COSMIC Function Points helps all aspects of software management.

 

Software governance starts with knowing size.

Technology leadership has done a poor job of providing executives and boards with meaningful metrics for progress, work and achievement of business value and risk management through IT.

Finance, technology and business need a common language for spend and value on IT. The common language needs to be readily understood by all and it needs to cover cost, value, productivity and quality.

Size matters. The size of a software project or undertaking is measurable. Standardised functional software sizing in CFP is a very effective ingredient for helping the C-suite work with IT to effectively manage IT investment.

Standard Software Sizing

Large IT projects are far more prone to failure than smaller ones; first, we must agree upon how to size them. CFP stands for COSMIC Function Point, a standardised means of measuring software size. CFP is a measure of user-recognisable functionality, irrespective of the technology used to achieve it. The COSMIC sizing methodology is free to use by anyone, and you can read about it here.

If you’d like to learn more about TBM as a concept, you can read about it here.

C-Suite Needs Better Ways to Manage Technology
The C-Suite has a universal language for IT investment:
  • Obtain insights into technology spend and value
  • Improve technology decisions
  • Improve application portfolio management
  • Align tech spend to general ledger
  • Benchmark technology investments
  • Improve vendor management
  • Identify and reduce waste

CFP is an easy-to-understand, valid indicator of size that allows sound decision-making without technical jargon. By adopting CFP as the core metric and the common language for discussing IT investments, organisations can help the c-suite work with IT to improve decision-making of technology investments. Here are examples of how it can be used:

Application Portfolio Management

Knowing the absolute size (in CFP) of the applications in an IT portfolio is a solid starting place for IT leaders and their peers to make better decisions about technology investments. This awareness of functional size can include planning change, assessing total cost of ownership, and even benchmarking IT spend and value. Some organisations may have millions of CFP in core operational systems; others in the same industry may have just a few hundred thousand. Knowing the cost of maintenance (per CFP) of each application can help drive sound decision-making about the lifecycle of any application (replace, maintain, rebuild).
  • Size: CFP
  • Value: benefits per CFP from an application

Capability Delivery

Rapid delivery of new software capabilities can be the critical difference between winners and losers in a business space. One case uses CFP/month as a basis for rate of delivery, even as a measure of rate of innovation. Furthermore, this can be supplemented by the quality metric of defects discovered (in production) per CFP. A low rate indicates high quality work.

  • Productivity: CFP per month
  • Quality: defects per CFP found in production

Vendor Management

Are you getting fair value from your IT supplier? How would you even measure value? We advocate that cost per CFP (at a given quality) fits the bill. It’s a simple metric that’s hard to game and helps managers assess a vendor’s work.

  • Cost: $ per CFP
  • Productivity: CFP per month
  • Quality: defects per CFP (found in production or pre-production)

Benchmarking

With just a few pieces of knowledge, IT organisations can establish internal benchmarks for their work. They can identify highly productive teams to internally promote good practice, and also identify low productivity teams to respond with suitable and measurable actions that increase effectiveness. Armed with the size of a project (in CFP), effort to deliver that project (eg. total staff days), and duration of that project (e.g. in months), one can derive a productivity index.

  • Cost, new capabilities : cost per CFP of new functionality
  • Cost, maintenance: cost per CFP of maintained software
  • Productivity: CFP per month
  • Quality: defects per CFP found in production (aligns to defect removal efficiency)
  • Technical debt quantification: in CFP

Existential Safety

A modern organisation’s survival depends on responsible IT management. Failure to address existential risks such as care of customer data, cybersecurity and responsible use of AI have all become board-level concerns (even though many boards are ill-equipped to assess it). The use of CFP as a baseline for size of software can help boards assess the “per CFP” commitment to cybersecurity and “per CFP” attention to ethical use of AI, making necessary changes and maintenance easier and safer than ever.

  • AI to manage: in CFP
  • AI benefits: value per CFP
  • security enhancements needed: in CFP
  • technical debt quantification: in CFP

By following TBM philosophy and mastering the concept of CFP as an effective size measurement, you’re ahead in the game of sound IT decision-making.

Automated software sizing done right.

Together with ScopeMaster, automated sizing can accelerate the adoption of CFP as a standard metric and provide all these benefits and more. Take a tour today!

Technology Business Management and CFP: destined to unite?

An observation by our founder, Colin Hammond: “Apptio is the software suite of tools that helps businesses do TBM. Apptio is also the leading tool vendor in this space and may be about to be bought by IBM for several billion dollars. Back in 1974, an IBM employee, Allan Albrecht, invented standardised functional sizing, a concept designed to help with technology management decades before the TBM label was created. Albrecht’s original idea has now evolved to the COSMIC Function Point ISO standard. This raises many questions, including: I wonder if IBM will embed COSMIC sizing into the Apptio tooling? “