How do you characterize software development excellence?
What metrics characterize software development excellence? If we are not careful, we may choose a metric that encourages the wrong behavior. Too much focus on an end date will encourage a sacrifice in quality. Too much focus on productivity will encourage avoidance of high risk/high return efforts. Too much focus on minimizing the number of bugs may discourage the reporting of bugs or may encourage underestimating the severity of the bug in order to get a lower score. In my view software development excellence is really about the professionalism and maturity of the team doing the software development which means, in my mind, very high scores in the following areas: Self-Organizing : Is the team independent and self-motivated? Is the team efficient, self-guided, and able to determine when additional input is needed for non-trivial choices? Ownership of Quality : Is the team proud of what they are building? Do they have very high quality standards which go up even higher ov