There is a growing interest during last years in a better understanding of the inner meaning of ‘product value’ as perceived from the final customer, looking at possible techniques and new ways to anticipate and better capturing requirements from early stages. But even if more and more professionals and IT organizations achieve certifications on their personal knowledge or organizational maturity that should go in that direction, few attention is paid to the project closure phase and to the historicization of project data. If planned and gathered at the right level of granularity, effort data could explain and represent a valuable knowledge base – jointly with some requirement metrics - about how to create and reinforce the value to deliver to customer. This paper provides a list of possible improvement actions derived from practical experience that can bring more value to software products moving from better and more accurate project management and measurement processes.

1. VASOP – 1° Workshop on Valuable Software Products
Limerick (Ireland), June 21 2010
A valuable ‘Data Experience’ The impact of historical data
on your estimates and
organizational maturity
levels
Luigi Buglione, Ph.D.
Process Improvement & Measurement Specialist
Industry Business Unit
Engineering.IT
www.eng.it

2. Engineering At a glance
_ The first Italian ICT player
_ more than 730 M/€ revenues Research and PA & HC Finance Industry TELCO Utilities
Development
_ 1000 clients
_ 6,300 IT specialists System Int. &
Consultancy
% 46 70 54 80 80
Outsourcing % 35 10 27 10
Software
% 19 20 19 10 20
ERP IT Security ECM
Plant Management
Managed Operations Broadband & Media
System
www.eng.it
www.eng.it

3. Data Experience Goals of the presentation
 G1. Introduce the ‘value’ issue observing the possible
measurable entities and the value chain
 G2. Observing the state-of-the-art in Software Engineering
practices, noting some improvement points
 G3. Propose some tips from experience for improving product
value by historical data and data management in general
3 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

4. Data Experience Agenda
• Introduction
– Defining ‘value’
– A bit of humour…
• State-of-the-art
– Project repositories
– Product Standards
– Requirement Management
• Some proposals for improving product value
– Usage of standards
– Refine your PHD
– Build better estimation models
– Build balanced measurement programs
• Conclusions & Prospects
• Q&A
4 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

5. Introduction Defining ‘Value’: Some Questions
Q: what is ‘value’?
Q: how (and from who) should be perceived?
Q: is there a way to measure it?
Q: which possible improvements for achieving it?
5 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

6. Introduction Defining ‘Value’: Word(s) & Concept(s)
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7. Introduction Defining ‘Value’: Perspectives
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8. Introduction Defining ‘Value’: Perspectives
Source: QEST model webpage: http://www.semq.eu/leng/modtechqlm.htm
8 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

9. Introduction Defining ‘Value’: Perspectives
9 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

10. Introduction Defining ‘Value’: Measurable Entities
Organization/ SBU
Project
Resources Process Product
fsu
Measurement
10 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

11. Introduction Defining ‘Value’: Measurement & Data
11 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

12. Data Experience Agenda
• Introduction
– Defining ‘value’
– A bit of humour…
• State-of-the-art
– Project repositories
– Product Standards
– Requirement Management
• Some proposals for improving product value
– Usage of standards
– Refine your PHD
– Build better estimation models
– Build balanced measurement programs
• Conclusions & Prospects
• Q&A
12 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

13. State-of-the-art Project Repositories
• URL: www.isbsg.org
• release 11 (2009) -- 5052 projects -- 100+ attributes
• Next: e.g. right now, no splitted effort by ReqType (FUR/NFR)
Next
13 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

14. State-of-the-art Product Standards
Software Product
• ISO/IEC 9126-x (Software Product Quality)
• ISO/IEC 25012:2008 (Data Quality)
•…
Usability/Accessibility
• ISO 9241-11
• W3C’s WCAG 2.0
•…
…but
• even if those norms & standards exists from years, often not used
• in particular, few development for the non-functional side (e.g. productivity is
typically measured as the ratio between UFP/Effort; where UFP is a size measure
from sw product FUR, while effort is referred to the whole project scope)
14 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

15. State-of-the-art Requirement Management
Huge set of possible process measures
• …but often not applied and traceable in Project & Quality Plans
• …not always catched and properly elicited hearing stakeholders  the less
requirements elicited, the lower the quality perceived from the final
product/service  it’s a process problem about the “Requirement Management”
process (e.g. REQM PA in CMMI)
• …not often properly classified and managed
 By type: FUR (Functional User Requirements) vs NFR (Non-Functional Requirements)
type
 By entity: org, project, resource, process, product
entity
 …
• …not always used to link different SLC phases
 Coverage indices w/Test Cases (by test type), w/SRS, ...
15 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

16. Data Experience Agenda
• Introduction
– Defining ‘value’
– A bit of humour…
• State-of-the-art
– Project repositories
– Product Standards
– Requirement Management
• Some proposals for improving product value
– Usage of standards
– Refine your PHD
– Build better estimation models
– Build balanced measurement programs
• Conclusions & Prospects
• Q&A
16 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

17. Some proposals… Usage of Standards
…in everyday practices
• Large (potential) embedded experience and tips from projects often not
historicized
• Closure phase not always properly run (even if well known – see 5° PMBOK phase)
• Low knowledge level of ISO/IEEE standards
• An example: ISO/IEC 14764:2006 (Maintenance Process)
Process
 The more granular the classification of maintenance types (4 sub-types) 
the more adequate the (possible) ways to manage contracts, because more
modularized fares & prices
 More projects properly managed  More saved resources and value to be
brought into final products (e.g. BSC strategic map)
17 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

18. Some proposals… Refine your PHD
…with more attributes
• PHD: Project Historical Database
• CMMI-DEV  OPD (Organizational Process Definition), SP 1.4 (Establish the Org’s
Measurement Repository)
• To be used for better clustering from the whole repository
• Introduce more attributes / split main figures into more granular sub-types. E.g.:
 SLC phases by ReqType (Functional vs. Non-Functional)
 Effort by ReqType (derived from FUR/NFR)
 Estimator/Measurer name for (some) size figures
 Measured entity (projects/sub-projects/change requests, …)
 No. of Requirements generating Elementary Processes (EP) for FSM methods, classified
by BFC Type
 …
18 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

19. Some proposals… Build better Estimation Models
…using more independent variables
• when using FSM methods, e.g. use combinations of 2+ BFC types
 IFPUG BFC (EI, EO, EQ, ILF, EIF)
 COSMIC BFC (E, X, R, W)
• Results: increased R2 using the same dataset
NW _ Effort = B0 + B1 ( E ) + B2 ( X ) + B3 ( R ) + Bk (W )
Preconditions
• Historicize project data at the proper level of granularity. E.g.
 FSU at the BFC type level (by frequencies and – eventually – weigthed values)
 Effort at the SLC phase and/or by ReqType and/or…
 Defects by severity/priority class and/or resolution time by phase, and/or…
• Skill people – not only estimators – a bit more on Statistics
• Use something more than averages!
Source: Gencel C. & Buglione L., Do Different Functionality Types Affect the Relationship between Software Functional Size and Effort?, Proceedings
of IWSM/MENSURA 2007, Palma de Mallorca (Spain), November 5-8 2007, pp. 235-246
19 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

20. Some proposals… Build Balanced Measurement Programs
URL: Balancing Multiple Perspective (BMP) webpage  http://www.semq.eu/leng/modtechbmp.htm
20 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

21. Data Experience Agenda
• Introduction
– Defining ‘value’
– A bit of humour…
• State-of-the-art
– Project repositories
– Product Standards
– Requirement Management
• Some proposals for improving product value
– Usage of standards
– Refine your PHD
– Build better estimation models
– Build balanced measurement programs
• Conclusions & Prospects
• Q&A
21 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

22. Data Experience Conclusions & Perspectives
• ‘Value’
 Term very difficult to catch (elusive)
 Referable to different entities  software product/service
 Different techniques in the TQM arena (e.g. QFD; AHP; …)
 Difficult to size and to be estimated  IFPUG FPA for sizing FUR
 What about NFR? And a structured EAM (Entity-Attribute-Measure) analysis?
 The process is not the product…  what value bring historical data into software
processes?
• State-of-the-art
 Project historical data (PHD)  historicize your own data
 ISBSG r11 (2009) – 5052 projects for starting a benchmarking program  are all the fields
of your interest contained/stretched?
 Take into account also software product NFR  e.g. ISO 9126, 9241-11, WCAG, etc…
 Most of the product perceivable value is derived from a proper requirement management
(and elicitation)  what it is our capability level in Requirement Engineering?
 Some Proposals
 Use standards in everyday practices  increase awareness and lower the cost for analysis
in bid and technical solutions, adopting/reusing/modifying yet existing solutions
 Refine your organizational PHD with more attributes  introduce/refine possible new
attributes at the project/process/product level helping in better clustering datasets
 Build estimation models using more independent variables (e.g. +BFC for FSM methods)
 Build a balanced measurement program  use BPM for choosing few, more vital measures
balanced by perspective and causally linked, lowering the overall cost of measurement and
increasing the informative ROI in the organization
22 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

23. Data Experience Creating ‘value’: learning from Comics
Source: http://blog.visualmotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mccloud_understanding_comics.jpg
23 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

24. Data Experience Q&A
Thanks for your attention!
24 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

25. Further readings… Misurare il software
Misurare il software
Quantità, qualità, standard e
miglioramento di processo nell’Information
& CommunicationTechnology
Franco Angeli, 2008 – 3a edizione
Collana: Informatica ed Organizzazioni
pp. 380 -Volume 724.20
ISBN 978-88-464-9271-5
Luigi Buglione
www.semq.eu/leng/booksms.htm
Part of copyrights are donated to
FISM (Fondazione Italiana Sclerosi Multipla)
25 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it

26. Thanks for your Attention !
We care of your problems and we have in mind a solution
Luigi Buglione
Industry, Services & Infrastructures
Via R.Morandi 32 Tel. +39-06.8307.4472
00148 Roma Fax +39 -06.8307.4200
Cell. +39 -335.1214813
www.eng.it luigi.buglione@eng.it
26 VASOP’10 – Limerick, June 21, 2010 – © 2010 L.Buglione www.eng.it