Constraints of Software Development (03/08/2008)
... It is performed by people. Therefore, people are the single most important potentially capacity constrained resource in software development. As the single most important resource on a software project, people must be protected. There is more than one way to provide a buffer for the people. The most obvious is to have more developers than needed....

Determining Throughput for Software Services (03/06/2008)
... Why not? ARPU represents the sales per subscriber to the service. The figure is averaged over the aggregated subscriber base. The sales figure for a given time period is ARPU multiplied by the number of subscribers. ARPU does not deduct out any direct costs. Hence, it is not an equivalent for T....

Measuring Inventory in the Software Production System (03/04/2008)
... If the base level of performance cannot be met, the functional requirement would not be considered as delivered or complete. As functional requirements are being tracked, it is inferred that base level nonfunctional requirements are being tracked along with them. It is therefore vital to skillfully manage the development of nonfunctional requirements. Excess work on nonfunctional requirements will increase OE, increase lead time, and decrease T. However, there are preferred levels of nonfunctional performance that could be considered market differentiating, and these have a Throughput value....

Traditional Software Production Metrics (03/03/2008)
... Traditional software metrics are compatible and perhaps heavily influenced by traditional cost accounting methods. They are focused on cost. Focusing on managing OE is suboptimal in achieving the system goal of more profit now and in the future, with a healthy ROI. It is more important to focus on Throughput and Inventory. Hence, traditional metrics do not meet the criteria for relevance....

Cost Accounting for Software Product Development (03/02/2008)
... Upgrades can be apportioned directly to the features in the new version, whilst new sales must be cost assigned across the new version and each of the previous versions. When an upgrade is sold, it is safe to assume that the purchaser is buying the new features in the current version. However, when a sale is made to a new customer, this customer may be buying the product for all sorts of reasons. Some of the older features may be attractive, but so might some of the newer ones. Trying to determine an attribution for this gets ugly very quickly....