2008 SEPG Conference - Measurement and Analysis Tutorials

The 2008 SEPG Conference kicked off today in Tampa, Florida. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/sepg/2008/program.html I was the session moderator for the Measurement and Analysis tutorials: Satisfying Organizational Needs With A Concise Measurment Program and Metrics Based Process Improvement. Both tutorials emphasized the need to tie measures to specific business objectives, to keep the measurement program simple and "parsimonious", and to avoid identifying, collecting, and analyzing measures for every single Process Area in the CMMI. Your measurement program should be built around how you conduct business, not a specific process improvement model. Start small with the easy measures first that people and managers care about. People have to be motivated to use the measures. So you have to be aware of "what is it it for me (WIIFM)" when considering other's motivations. Gain some experience and knowledge from this initial set of measures and then add, modify, and delete measures to grow your measurement program. It all sounds simple and is a common sense approach. Though in my experience, organizations still need some coaching and mentoring in order to correctly focus their attention on specifying meaningful measurements.