PRODUCTIVITY MEASUREMENT

Introduction

A productivity measure commonly is understood as a ratio of outputs produced to resources consumed. However, the observer has many different choices with respect to the scope and nature of both the outputs and resources considered. For example, outputs might be measured in terms of delivered product or functionality, while resources might be measured in terms of effort or monetary cost. Productivity numbers may be used in many different ways, e.g., for project estimation and process evaluation. An effective productivity measure enables the establishment of a baseline against which performance improvement can be measured. It helps an organization make better decisions about investments in processes, methods, tools, and outsourcing.

In addition to the wide range of possible inputs and outputs to be measured, the interpretation of the resulting productivity measures may be affected by other factors such as requirements changes and quality at delivery. Much of the debate about productivity measurement has focused narrowly on a simplistic choice between function points and lines of code as size measures, ignoring other options as well as many other equally important factors. Despite the complexity of the software engineering environment, some people believe that a single productivity measure can be defined that will work in all circumstances and satisfy all measurement users’ needs.