5 Important Software Development Metrics For Project Managers To Follow

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Software

There are several important software development metrics for project managers to follow carefully. Development benchmarks or key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurable, quantifiable, and countable standards. These metrics are regularly used to assess system performance, delegate upcoming responsibilities, and compare productivity. Or, they can track organizational data security, measure employee retention, or evaluate user experiences (UX). As a software engineering project manager, you can follow several different metrics throughout the development process. This way, you can formulate effective goals, simplify decision-making, and have easy team communication. To get started now, read on to learn the most important software development metrics for project managers to follow. 

Time To Market (TTM)

Time to market is undeniably one of the most important metrics in the custom software development process. TTM represents the total duration it takes to bring bespoke software from initial conception to market release. Everybody involved in your end-to-end development process will directly impact the achieved time-to-market. Prominently, TTM is measured when an entirely new software project begins. However, it can also be implemented for incremental feature releases on existing applications. With a better understanding of approximate market release times, software companies can accurately budget, meet stakeholder demands, and streamline releases. Surely, measuring TTM is an important software development metric to involve in your next project. 

Overall System Security

In addition, you should measure your custom software solution’s overall security strength and architecture. Get metrics on any security vulnerabilities, exploits, vulnerabilities, or threats that exist within your system. Essentially, a security vulnerability is any flaw, defect, or error within your IT system that hackers can easily attack. Some of the most common security vulnerabilities are malicious code, misconfigurations, or encryption problems. Or, you can have coding oversights or faults. Once you have a measure of security, you can implement principles to correct it. Prominently, teams attack vulnerabilities with image scanners, penetration testing, or application security testing (SAST/DAST). Then, you can monitor how these metrics improve or decline over time. Certainly, security is a top software development metric to measure on your next project. 

Incurred Defects

Of course, you also need to measure for any defects incurred. These KPIs give quality assurance (QA) teams a clearer understanding of why applications fail. More importantly, it helps them understand how specific vulnerabilities can be avoided in future work. When measuring these factors, look at code coverage, defect density, and technical debt. Companies should also measure their defect detection percentage, and this represents the difference in vulnerabilities found pre-deployment and post-release. Additionally, trams should include any actual security incidents, such as hacks, breaches, or system overhauls, within these figures. Indeed, incurred defects are a top software development metric to measure on enterprise projects. 

Final Product Quality

It also helps to gain helpful insights into final software development product quality. There are various KPIs you can potentially involve, and some of the most popular include user experience (UX), customer satisfaction, cycle times, and developer performance. You can run beta user tests to get this data, collect feedback, and record cases from your customer support team. Then, you can use these details as you prepare future feature rollouts, updates, and system modifications. When tracking the most important software development metrics, assess final product quality. 

Dev Team Focus

Larger software development teams can especially benefit from measuring team focus. Team focus KPIs give you a clearer understanding of where developers are spending the most time, resources, and effort. Most commonly, teams measure for unexpected code churns, blockers, or spikes. These indicate that there may be performance issues that need to be addressed. Sometimes, this may mean development timelines need to be extended. Or, more programmers may need to be added to a specific part of the team. You can track engineer replacements, new work started, and legacy refactoring encountered to gain team-focus insights. Absolutely, dev team focus is an important software engineering statistic to monitor in 2022. 

Every project manager must follow several important software development metrics closely. First and foremost, consider the time-to-market key performance indicator (KPI). Next, measure the overall security of your system, and this will help dev teams with policies in place for zero trust security. You should also measure for any incurred defects encountered throughout the project or closely track the development team’s focus. Another important metric to measure is final product quality. Follow the points highlighted above to learn the most important software development metrics for project managers to follow. 

 

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