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by: Grant Rule
 Every 10 years since 1801 there has been a count of all people and households in the UK. Even earlier, the 'Censor' was an officer of the Roman republican government responsible for supervising the census (and also public behaviour and morals). Since Roman times, government strategists have used population census information to establish policy. Understanding population formation, distribution, growth and needs is clearly a crucial element for good governance.
Similarly, in any organisation that relies on software, good governance requires a reasonable knowledge of the population of software applications and projects. But, in our experience, many organisations fail to maintain this basic information. This seriously damages rational decision making.
One company, preparing to outsource software maintenance and support, commissioned a Rapid Application Portfolio Sizing study of what was believed to be a portfolio of 800 applications. In practice, 1200 independent applications were found. For some, including one used at four sites, the source code had 'gone missing', leaving those responsible in terror of receiving a Request For Change.
A surprising number of clients seem to have lost track of the number of employees and contractors they've engaged and even of how many projects they have. In another recent case, an organisation spent several months compiling a catalogue of their projects (it is still incomplete!).
How can senior IT managers make new commitments to their business colleagues and customers if they lack the details of existing commitments and resources?
Census information can be collected every ten years because population demographics change relatively slowly. Business conditions change more rapidly. "A week is a long time in politics", as they say. To provide management with useful feedback from the software process, measurement must be more or less continuous, timely, accurate and low cost. It should be an integral part of all work.
The culture of an organisation is derived from, or at least very strongly influenced by, the behaviour of its senior management. If key decision makers demand and use quantified details of progress and risk, project managers will emulate them. The converse may also be true. The disciplines of good planning, monitoring and control begin in the Board Room.
Is it time your organisation commissioned a software project census?
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Articles
Planning Counts
Measurement programmes and benchmarking exercises need to be planned and managed. For ideas we look at the 2001 Census.
Software Project Census
Details of a typical approach used and the services available from SMS for conducting a census.
Other Articles from Applying Software Metrics
Politically
& Technically Correct ?
An article which goes beyond the political correctness
of terms like 'man hour', 'man day' and 'man month'
to investigate what they mean as a unit of measurement.
Performance Assessment
To compare project performance, identify improvement opportunities and make good estimates for future projects, you need to assess the performance of existing projects.
Services
Applying Software Metrics
Data Collection
Services for identifying, collecting and checking measurements.
Starting a Measurement Programme
A measurement programme is part of a means to an end (one or more business objectives). To deliver any benefit the objective(s) must be clearly understood first and then the measurement programme must be designed to support them.
Supporting a Measurement Programme
Once successfully started, there are various activities required to keep the measurement programme operating effectively and the results relevant.
Assessing Capability
Evaluation
Supplier capabillity evaluations and software process evaluations. Usefull for selecting internal or external suppliers and ensuring appropriate capabilities are maintained once selected.
Estimating and Risk
Early Estimation
Estimating software size from the feasability stage through to early requirements gathering. Also approppriate for otuline designs.
Estimating Cost, Duration, Effort, etc
Developing estimates of cost etc from measurements or estimates of size in combination with other constraints.
Measuring Performance
Benchmarking
An accepted technique used to calculate and improve organisational performance with respect to appropriate benchmarks.
Sourcing
Contract Management
A set of processes for management of the work subcontracted to those suppliers, to ensure compliance and ameliorate the issues and risks involved.
Planning and Supplier Selection
A reliable process for identfying a suitable supplier or suppliers for given packages of work. This also identifies issues or risks to the work that may be a consequence of using each supplier.
Training
Manager’s Guide to Software Measurement 
Understand how disciplined, quantitative practices can be used to control costs and maximise productivity.
Using the Goal-Question-[Indicator]-Measure Technique  
A popular and systematic method for ensuring good design of metrics for use in a measurement programme.
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