NESMA is an international non-profit organization focused on software measurement and metrics, aimed at improving the use and understanding of these practices across various industries. The webinar discusses key aspects of benchmarking, its benefits, processes, and metrics commonly used to enhance application development and maintenance performance. Key takeaways emphasize the importance of benchmarking for understanding organizational performance and identifying areas for improvement.

1. Nesma webinar
2024-04

2. www.nesma.org

3. Nesma - Software Measurement Standards and Improvement
Nesma is a non-profit international software measurement organization, founded in 1989, focused on:
▪ Spreading knowledge about software measurement and software metrics;
▪ Act as a Body of Knowledge for the industry regarding the use of software metrics in all business areas;
▪ Remain independent, objective and not-for-profit;
▪ Research the applicability of software metrics in all business areas;
▪ Connect relevant organizations in the industry that Nesma feels are expert in one of the areas where
software measurement and metrics are important;
▪ Produce relevant guidelines, reports and other information products that are useful for the software
industry;
▪ Produce a platform where people can discuss issues they experience with software measurement and metrics
or where they can exchange ideas and/or knowledge.
Nesma is Gold Partner of International Software Benchmarking Standards Group, partner in the
International Cost Estimation and Analysis Association (ICEAA) Software Special Interest Group and partner
with the China Software Process Improvement group.

4. Introducing me
Harold van Heeringen
▪ >25 years experience in IT, >20 years in software measurement and metrics.
▪ Ex-Sogeti – 17 years – Metrics desk: FPA, metrics, estimation, benchmarking.
▪ IDC Metri – 8 years – Principal Consultant and Practice Lead IT Intelligence services.
▪ ISBSG – Immediate Past President, data collection.
▪ NESMA – President.
▪ SIG ICEAA Software – Board member.
50 years young.
Living in Veendam, the Netherlands.
Married, 3 children.
Passions: playing speed chess, skiing, travelling, fitness, mountain biking, playing padel.

5. Topics for today
▪ Introducing Benchmarking
▪ Key benefits of Benchmarking.
▪ Typical metrics used in benchmarking.
▪ How to do a benchmark.
▪ Typical results of a benchmark.
▪ Q&A
This webinar is being
recorded! And
uploaded to the
Nesma YouTube
channel

6. Introducing Benchmarking
Benchmarking is the practice of comparing your organization's
processes, performance metrics, and strategies against those
of industry leaders or similar companies. It's essentially a way to
gauge your own performance by looking at how others achieve
success.
The key aspects of benchmarking are:
▪ Comparison: It involves comparing your performance
indicators (KPIs) against established benchmarks or the
practices of leading companies in your industry.
▪ Focus: The focus can be on various aspects like efficiency,
quality, cost, customer satisfaction, or even specific processes
like application development or maintenance.
▪ Goal: The ultimate goal is to identify areas where you can
improve your own practices, optimize resource allocation,
and ultimately achieve superior performance.

7. Benchmarking AD and AMS performance
Benchmarking Application Development (AD) and Application Maintenance & Support (AMS) processes.
▪ Up to 70% of the IT budget is often spend on AD and AMS processes and/or services.
▪ However, most organizations/management lack understanding of the value for money and/or improvement potential.
▪ Especially organizations with external teams and/or maintenance contracts don’t know if the delivered value for money is in line
with market expectations.
▪ Current industry practices:
▪ AD: Hourly rate cards, Blended rates
▪ AMS: fixed price or ticket-based pricing (incidents, problems, service requests).
Benchmarking offers many benefits:
▪ Understanding the value for money delivered by external teams.
▪ Identify areas for improvement in your development & maintenance processes.
▪ Compare your performance against industry leaders & similar organizations.
▪ Set realistic goals and targets.
▪ Reduce costs and enhance application quality & reliability.
▪ Adjust supplier contracts pricing and quality KPIs to reflect updated market pricing.
▪ Output-based pricing of AD teams, using market average KPIs.
▪ Stay competitive!

8. The CIO challenge

9. Benchmarking Process
Decide on Peer
Group and BM
Scope

10. Select the Peer Group

11. Peer Group Selection – Application Development
Choosing the right peer group is crucial for effective application development benchmarking. Here are some key factors to
consider when selecting your peers:
▪ Focus on your specific industry: Benchmarking against companies in your industry provides the most relevant comparison as
they face similar challenges and opportunities. For example, an e-commerce company wouldn't want to benchmark against a
manufacturing plant.
▪ Consider the types of applications you develop: If you build mobile apps, compare yourself to other companies creating
mobile apps. This ensures a more accurate picture of development processes and performance metrics relevant to your
application type.
▪ Match your organization's size: Selecting peers of similar size (number of employees, revenue) creates a fairer comparison.
Large enterprises have different resource allocation and development approaches than smaller startups.
▪ Account for development methodology: If your team uses Agile, compare against other Agile development shops.
Benchmarking against a Waterfall development team might not provide meaningful insights.
▪ Account for development technology: If your team develops in Java, compare the team performance against other teams that
use the same technology.
▪ Align with your strategic goals: If your primary focus is on rapid development and innovation, benchmark against companies
known for their agility. If security and compliance are top priorities, compare yourself to organizations with a strong security
track record.
▪ Access to benchmarking data: Consider the availability of relevant data for your chosen peer group. Industry reports,
research organizations, and even professional networks can be valuable sources of benchmarking data for specific industries
and application types.

12. AD Benchmark – How? An example!
Initiation
▪ Select the Scope: for instance, a new Development Project or a release of an agile team. For this example, we select a release of
2 sprints (1 calendar month)
▪ Determine the Peer group: for the example an Agile team, financial industry, Java development.
Data Gathering
▪ Gather the user stories that were initiated and completed in this release.
▪ Collect the effort hours spent and the cost of this effort (per function/role).
▪ Collect the defects found in this release.
Data Analysis
▪ To measure the output (value) delivered, use a standard for functional size measurement to objectively size the output.
Especially in agile development, functionality may also be modified or removed from the application during the releases.
Recommended is the Nesma standard: Easy Functional Sizing (to be released soon).
▪ Analyze the effort, cost and defects. If necessary, normalize the data to reflects the actual scope. For instance, if there is effort
in the numbers that should not be there (e.g., training, spike, etc.), remove that effort/cost.
▪ Analyze the defects found, and the impact of the rework of resolving the defects.
▪ Calculate the main benchmark metrics: Project Delivery Rate (PDR: Hours/FP), Cost Efficiency (EUR/USD per FP), Delivery
Speed (FP per month) and Defect Density (Defects/1000 FP).

13. Data Analysis example
Team Effort % Cost %
Requirements 56 5% 5.880
€ 5%
Design 90 8% 11.200
€ 10%
Development 493 44% 46.816
€ 44%
Test 314 28% 27.910
€ 26%
Implementation 67 6% 6.854
€ 6%
Scrum Master 101 9% 8.770
€ 8%
Total 1.120 100% 107.430
€ 100%
Performance metric Value UoM
Functionality Delivered 124 FP
Defects 21
PDR 9,0 Hours/FP
Cost Efficiency 866
€ EUR/FP
Delivery Speed 124 FP/month

14. ISBSG: The Gold Standard in Software Benchmarking
The International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG ), founded in 1997, is a non-profit organization dedicated to
establishing and promoting industry standards for software development and maintenance benchmarking. They provide a
comprehensive data repository of real-world project metrics from leading organizations worldwide.
Mission: “To improve the management of IT resources by both business and government, through the provision and
exploitation of public repositories of software engineering knowledge that are standardized, verified, recent and
representative of current technologies”
Nesma has been a Gold Partner of ISBSG since its establishment in 1997. This long-standing partnership signifies our deep
commitment to:
▪ Reliable Benchmarking Data: Nesma leverage ISBSG data to allow our members to use the most up-to-date and reliable
industry data for benchmarking, estimation, outsourcing, performance measurement, research and analysis, etc.
▪ Advanced Benchmarking Expertise: Nesma shares extensive knowledge of ISBSG data and methodologies, allowing our
members to deliver insightful analyses and actionable recommendations.
▪ Continuous Improvement: Nesma actively collaborates with ISBSG to contribute to the evolution of software benchmarking
standards and best practices.

15. Peer Group Selection – ISBSG data
11800+ data points of new development and enhancement projects, releases and sprints.
253 columns with project data attributes.
PDR = hours per FP (inverse of universal concept of Productivity)

16. Peer Group Selection
Filter the data using criteria:
▪ Data Quality Rating = A or B.
▪ Project Year: >2016
▪ Industry Sector: Finance
▪ Primary Programming Language = Java
▪ Count Approach = Nesma
▪ Development Methodology = Agile Development
This results in a peer group of 43 data points.
The figure shows the distribution of these 43 data points
regarding the descriptive statistics.
Usually, we refer to the P25 as Peer Max (best
productivity), the Median is Peer Average reflecting the
industry average Productivity, and the P75 as Peer Low.
Our example: PDR is Peer Low, therefore there is
significant room to improve the Productivity.
Example
project: 9,0
h/FP

17. Other Analysis and Benchmark possibilities
Analyze and Benchmark:
▪ Project Delivery Rate Cost Efficiency, Delivery Speed, Defect Density: index!
▪ Benchmark Hourly rates of external parties.
▪ The percentage effort per function/role.
▪ Rework due to Defects
Combine the analysis results. For instance, low productivity can be caused by:
▪ Low percentage of requirements effort resulting in poor requirements quality.
▪ Bad programming practices may result in high defect density, resulting in a lot of
rework.
▪ Idle team members because the product owner has not completed the user
stories in time.
▪ Rework due to high percentage of modified functionality (unclear product
owner).
▪ Slow implementation process resulting in higher than usual implementation
effort.
▪ Etcetera.
The benchmark is the starting point for understanding the reasons why and to
improve and input for the Action Plan.
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
1,2
Productivity
Index
Cost Efficiency
Index
Delivery Speed
Index
Defect Density
Index
Team

18. Compare teams based on indices
Industry average
(different for each team)

19. Take Aways
▪ Benchmarking is an important process to understand
your performance against peers.
▪ Application Development is often the most important
value creation function.
▪ The industry is not doing a good job: Hourly Rates
benchmarks and T&M contracts.
▪ Application Development output (functionality
delivered) can be measured using objective ISO
standards for Functional Size Measurement (FSM).
▪ Metrics based on these measurements can be
benchmarked to (ISBSG) industry data.
▪ Organizations that implement these types of metrics
and benchmarks are able to identify high-performing
and low-performing teams.
▪ This knowledge is the starting point to improve, using
an action plan!

21. Action Plan!

22. Elevate Your Expertise in Software Measurement & Estimation
Join the Global Community of Nesma Professionals!
• Access a network of experts:
• Learn from experienced practitioners.
• Collaborate on projects and initiatives.
• Gain valuable resources:
• Free Research publications, white papers, case studies.
• Free Standardized measurement methods and guidelines (FPA standard).
• Large discounts on ISBSG data!
• Boost your career:
• Professional development opportunities & certifications.
• Increased industry recognition and credibility.
• Access and contribute to the ICEAA Software SIG.
• Expand your network:
• Connect with potential employers and clients on our free annual physical networking event!
• Contribute to shaping the future of the field.
• Stay informed:
• Gain insights into industry trends and challenge.
• Sign up now: Membership (fee: 125 EUR per Year).

23. ISBSG data and discounts for Nesma members
Nesma members get discount on ISBSG data subscriptions.
▪ Developments & Enhancements: 11800 data points of new application developments and releases.
▪ Maintenance & Support: 1921 data points of application Maintenance & Support.
▪ Corporate Subscription: All (updates of) the Development & Enhancements data + all the Maintenance & Support data
▪ Data Subscription: Subscription to only D&E or Only the M&S data.
▪ Productivity Query Tool: High-level analysis tool on a subset of the D&E data.
▪ All ISBSG reports are free for Nesma members.
Check for more information here:
https://nesma.org/publications/isbsg-data-and-reports/isbsg-project-data-subscription/
ISBSG offer Non-Member Nesma Member Discount %
ISBSG data subscription 1.830
€ 1.525
€ 305
€ 17%
Corporate subscription 4.575
€ 3.500
€ 1.075
€ 23%
PDQ tool 120
€ -
€ 120
€

24. Thank you for attending this webinar!
▪
Haroldvanheeringen
Become a Nesma member now! Annual fee is only €125
https://nesma.org/members/registration-form/
Connect with the Nesma community, including
free downloads of all digital products +
free access to a physical member meeting/network event!
large discounts on ISBSG data!
Nesma: http:// www.nesma.org
Harold.van.Heeringen@nesma.org