Cutter's Benchmarking Community

The more projects you benchmark, the more insight you gain

Most IT organizations today are faced with a highly difficult challenge to deliver more capability or software for their enterprise under ever-tighter deadlines. They are frequently under pressure to raise productivity, shorten schedules, and lower costs -- all at the same time. Many are seeking a roadmap to improve processes, implement techniques like Agile methods, or select outsource suppliers who can deliver at lower cost. To accomplish these goals managers must make critical decisions. Measures play a crucial role in that decision-making.

However, many organizations struggle with measurement. According to surveys by Cutter Consortium, ¹ many organizations collect measures, but the process of gathering and making effective use of them is poor. As a result, project estimation often suffers, productivity is often misunderstood, and improvement strategies languish.

Cutter Consortium, in conjunction with QSM Associates, has a solution: The Cutter Benchmarking Community -- a collaborative virtual community, complete with proven templates to help you collect and benchmark your projects against industry, with expert guidance from the seasoned Senior Consultants of Cutter's Measurement and Benchmarking Strategies Practice.

The Cutter Benchmarking Community (CBC) is unlike any group you've participated in before: This is the only place where you can contribute your project metrics data and in return, learn how it stacks up against more than 7400 other projects. And, if you're an Agile shop, or are thinking about the productivity and quality improvements you might achieve by transitioning Agile, you won't find a collection of Agile metrics and benchmarks like we have anywhere else.

You decide whether you contribute project data from Agile, waterfall, or outsourced projects. So, if you're making a case for keeping your traditional (waterfall) development in-house and want to benchmark against outsourced projects; or you're building a case for implementing Agile methods; or you want to ensure your gains from Agile are above industry norms, the Cutter Benchmarking Community provides you with the insight and perspective you need.

How It Works: The Big Picture

Michael Mah

When you join the CBC, we'll provide you with unlimited access to our on-demand training module and easy-to-master tools to make capturing your metrics a snap. We'll guide you on entering cost/staffing, schedule, quality, and size data for up to 4 projects. You'll receive a custom Trendline Report comparing your projects and those of the Cutter Benchmark Community as a whole, against the QSM worldwide database of agile projects, traditional projects, outsourced, or all projects. This Trendline Report comprises PowerPoint slides containing graphs depicting your organization's cost, schedule, quality and staffing metrics compared against like projects for the build phase as well as effort, cost, and schedules for the requirements or story phase -- along with commentary from Cutter Senior Consultant Michael Mah describing what the data means. Plus, you'll get Productivity Index (PI) calculations, comparing your organization against the industry as a whole.

How to Join

You can join the Cutter Benchmarking Community right now for the introductory rate of US $3000 -- a $1000 savings off the regular rate of $4000. In addition to your membership, you'll receive a complimentary one-year subscription to the Cutter Benchmark Review online resource center -- a $1000 value.

Your membership in the CBC provides:

• A CD-ROM and subscription to SLIM Data-Manager, one of the industry's most sophisticated metrics capture tools, which gives you an easy-to-use template, making data capture a breeze, whether your project is Agile, waterfall, maintenance, package implementation, or other lifecycle.

• Unlimited access for you and your team to on-demand training on how to use the templates to accurately capture and record your data.

• A Trendline Report providing eight different analysis views. You'll get five graphs that highlight your build phase (time-to-market, staffing, effort, defects, and Productivity Index [PI]) compared against the Community's projects and the industry as a whole, as well as three graphs depicting your requirements/story phase (schedule, effort, and staffing) vis-à-vis the Community and the industry.

• Participation in quarterly webinars with Michael Mah in which he reveals the latest trending of the group as a whole and offers tips on improving data collection methods, using metrics to support decision-making, etc., and answers your specific questions.

• One hour of phone/email inquiry time, which can be used towards additional training in data capture, additional analysis of your results, or advice on how to improve your measures. ^*

• A 30% discount on the Cutter Benchmark Almanac

• Plus, your membership entitles you to a single-seat subscription to Cutter Benchmark Review Online Resource Center , and

• A 30% discount on additional blocks of four projects benchmarked. (HOT VALUE: when you join at the special introductory rate of $3000, each project block you add within 90 days of receiving your Trendline Report is only $2100!)

Example data set from SLIM Data-Manager

We're confident that all of this will deliver you the solid benefits that a reliable metrics framework provides:

• Make better decisions, with speed and agility.

• Measures made easy, not burdensome.

• Information that gives you important answers to questions about the state of your past, current, or future projects.

• Insight and knowledge that you and your organization can access, share, and leverage.

And most importantly,

• The in-house skills to measure productivity and quality, estimate projects more accurately, manage scope and deadlines with authority, decrease rework, and lessen the pressures of overtime.

Join this exciting community to start receiving these benefits today! To join the Cutter Benchmarking Community, just download the brochure, or contact your Account Executive.

Notes

¹Bennatan, E., "Measuring Up to Metrics: Part II — Are Software Organizations Managing by Data?" Cutter Consortium Agile Product & Project Management Executive Update, Vol. 6 No. 4.

^*Additional hours may be purchased. Contact your Cutter Consortium Account Executive for details.

Download the brochure

About QSM Worldwide Database

The QSM database contains more than 7400 projects, representing 685+ million SLOC, 7+ million function points, and 600+ languages, from more than 500 organizations in 18 countries. Each year, an additional 200-400 projects are added. Data is collected by permission through our ongoing consulting work in the areas of productivity assessments, estimates, and cost-to-completes. Cutter Benchmarking Community members' data is added to this database. With the exception of an organization's own trendline, its data is only reported in aggregate such as with groups of projects of similar size, lifecycle, or industries.

About Cutter Benchmark Review

With a single-seat subscription to the Cutter Benchmark Review (CBR) online resource center, you benefit from the unique opportunity to look critically and objectively at the business technology issues impacting your enterprise. Each month, editor Dr. Gabriele Piccoli selects an IT topic of current concern and asks two of its foremost experts -- a distinguished academic and a practitioner in the field -- to frame the issue for you, explain how it relates to other trends, address the pressures and interests surrounding it, and provide a framework to help you make sense of the topic as it applies to your organization. These experts, aided by the collection of fresh survey data, waste no time diving into solutions and offering real-world advice and recommendations you can immediately put into action at your company. For more information.