SMS Services - Fast Data Collection Study

A benchmark enables management and staff understand recent performance with respect to other organisations and competitors.

Benchmarks can be derived for Application Development & Enhancement projects, or for Maintenance & Support activities. They establish baseline measures of performance from which the results of improvement initiatives can be measured.

Once a client has agreed to participate in a benchmark exercise, data must be collected retrospectively for a number of recent projects performed over an agreed period. Our professional consultants perform such work frequently so we can improve data collection times by an order of magnitude, collating and verifying all the necessary information in around 6 weeks.

Objectives

The objective is to rapidly collect all the data required to make a submission to a benchmarking service and to assist the client to receive the benchmark report in a timely fashion.

Scope & Process

A Fast Data Collection Study is often preceded by a Scope Study to identify the projects, applications and organisational groups that will contribute data and the period over which data is to be collected. The Full Data Collection Study then follows the procedure below:

Constraints & Assumptions

The Study is ‘timeboxed’. Total effort depends on the number of staff and projects at the client site(s). Terms Of Reference must be agreed for the study at the outset.

facilitate the Study and access to typical technical and project management documentation.

Procedure

Figure 1: Fast Data Collection Study Procedure

Reporting

Outline Plan & Schedule for the FDC Study
Regular verbal or email reports during data collection to highlight progress and raise any issues
Results Workshop with management
Submission to selected benchmarking organisation
Full Study Report with recommendations

Deliverables

A Fast Data Collection Study delivers a complete, consistent and verified benchmark submission in the form either of a populated data collection tool or a set of paper forms, whichever is the agreed instrument.

The submission will contain estimates of the precision of the collected data.

An Issues Log, with details of status and resolution, will be maintained, as will a ‘Who’s Who’ catalogue detailing all contributors and information sources.

The Full Study Report will briefly summarise the scope and execution procedure of the study and provide early feedback to management regarding results and ‘quick-win’ improvement opportunities.

Benefits

The time to collect benchmark data (and hence to deliver the benchmark report) is minimised - hence the feedback is more timely, relevant and useful.

Consistent data is collected and reviewed by experienced software measurement practitioners.

The impact on existing staff and schedules is minimized.