Five Core Metrics: The Intelligence Behind Successful Software Management

by Lawrence H. Putnam

To succeed in the software industry, managers need to cultivate a reliable development process. By measuring what teams have achieved on previous projects, managers can more accurately set goals, make bids, and ensure the successful completion of new projects. Acclaimed long-time collaborators Lawrence H. Putnam and Ware Myers present simple but powerful measurement techniques to help software managers allocate limited resources and track progress. Drawing new findings from an extensive database of more than 6,300 software projects, the authors demonstrate how readers can control projects with just five core metrics -- Time, Effort, Size, Reliability, and Process Productivity. With these metrics, managers can adjust ongoing projects to changing conditions -- surprises that would otherwise cause instant failure.

Genres: Programming

328 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tries to set itself up as something that will answer many of your questions and provide actionable processes, but I don't think it fully succeeds. There are also a variety of statements that should have been cited (some of which I knew from reading other books that *did* cite the appropriate study) that were not cited or lacked elaboration. I also thought some of the cited material was a bit dated (or otherwise insufficient). Still, there were some fairly recent studies mentioned (for its time). Honestly, I think this book would have benefitted from greater length (to appropriately pursue some of the threads & better tie them into research) or a truncation of some of its chapters, many of which offered only a small amount of elaboration.
I dislike *5-star* rating scales (and most rating scales, tbh). I'd give this a 3.5, so I'll round up to a 4. I think the book is worth a read, but it's not nearly as impressive as it could be. Stephen Kan's "Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering" is a more rigorous (and useful, imo) treatment of software metrics.

[Moshe Immerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dated, but still discusses many principles that remain relevant today.

[Janette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I've read on how to collect and use metrics to improve the software product development process. I've read a lot of books on this topic and I must say that I thought most of them were academic and impractical from an effort versus return perspective. I was so impressed by this one that we are putting it into practice in my company in order to achieve CMMi level 4.