Experiences and Insights from Applying GQM+Strategies in a Systems Product Development Organisation

Abstract—Aligning software-related activities with corporate strategies and goals is increasingly important for several reasons such as increasing the customer satisfaction in software-based products and services. Several approaches have been proposed to create such an alignment. GQM+Strategies is an approach that applies measurement principles to link goals and strategies on different levels of an organisation. In this paper, we describe experiences from applying GQM+Strategies to elicit, link, and align the goals of an integrated systems product development organisation across multiple organisational levels. We provide insights into how GQM+Strategies was applied during a five-month period. The paper presents the enacted application process and main lessons learnt. In addition, related approaches are described and an outlook on future work is given. Keywords—Measurement, strategic alignment, case study, GQM+Strategies, software engineering, project management. I