Analysis of Key Performance Indicators in Software Development

Productivity, quality, efficiency, speed and fit for purpose are the major factors to be considered in software development. Every software development company wants to develop a well performing, easy to use, effective, and efficient software. Implementing a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) helps to trace the productivity, efficiency, and quality of the software. KPIs helps to find a gap between expected and achieved productivity and quality of the software. KPIs not only find the gap, but also provide the reasons for performance deviation and ideas for improvement. The main goal of this thesis is to provide an understanding about different factors affecting software attributed such as productivity, quality, efficiency, speed and fit for purpose of software and importance of KPIs to improve these attributes of software. This thesis provides an overall view about KPIs in software development. The thesis includes the description about different factors affecting software attributes in software development process and global software development (GSD) process. This thesis also includes the analysis of the factors affecting software attributes and introducing suitable set of KPIs for each. In this thesis a brief description about importance of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) in software development is also incorporated. To achieve the goals, findings from own academic projects and previous research studies are collected, analyzed and concluded. For GSD approach, secondary data sets from two different studies are analyzed. From findings, a set of sample KPIs is suggested. The conclusion extracted from this thesis is; regular and proper measurement of productivity, quality, efficiency, and speed of the software helps to keep track on objectives. Results obtained from regular measurement also helps to take proper action in time, if the software development is deviating from predefined objectives. After reading this thesis one can get an idea about factors affecting productivity, quality, efficiency, and response time of software in different aspects, importance of KPIs in software development and a set of sample KPIs for each aspect