Software Engineering Institute

A pilot effort was initiated by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and led by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to assess the issues and effort involved in implementing a software measurement program across multiple sites and projects. The pilot was conducted involving multiple DoD organizations and projects from varying application domains. The objectives were to assess the ability of an organization to assess and use the core measures, determine the appropriate analysis and reporting of the measurement information at an organization and corporate level, determine the applicability of common definitions of the SEI core software measures, evaluate the effectiveness of the SEI core measure checklists for development and maintenance, and develop metrics program guidelines for DoD implementation. This technical report discusses the observations and lessons learned from the pilot effort and makes recommendations regarding software measurement implementation across a large organization.