Companies that develop and maintain software can dramatically improve their processes, obtain higher quality, and quicken their software releases by using Software Planner. This white paper discusses how to use Software Planner metrics to answer the most pressing questions for software development projects.

Software Planner provides an array of analysis tools including screens, dashboards and reports.

Question: Will our software ship on time?

To determine if your software will ship on time, create a project plan for your software release and decompose tasks on the project plan so that each task has estimates and are assigned to the proper team member. At the end of each day, have your team members log their hours towards assigned tasks. When logging hours, have them estimate the hours remaining to complete the task (this will automatically update the percentage complete). If this is done, you can then view burn down charts that show you if the software will ship on time:

The first chart (burndown) shows the beginning of the software release through the end of the software release. The linear line shows the baseline (or the path in which the project should follow if everything stays on course). The Hours Remaining line shows what is actually happening. We can see clearly that the project began slipping on 2/18/2009, as the estimated hours remaining began creeping above the baseline. We can also see that this project will not ship on time unless the team adds more resources or works more hours.

The 2nd chart shows velocity for the past 2 weeks activity, charting both the estimated hours, actual hours and hours remaining. If the estimated hours spike on any day, you know you have increased scope.

Below is an example of a project plan:

Question: Who is causing the project slippage?

If tasks begin to slip, you can quick determine what team members are causing the slippage. It could be for a number of reasons, they could have been sick, the tasks were not estimated properly, or technical issues arose that caused the slippage. Below is a slipping tasks dashboard that identifies this:

When clicked, it shows you the details of the slippage:

Question: Do we have adequate test coverage?

To determine if you have adequate test coverage, you must understand if each requirement has enough test cases to fully test the requirement. To accomplish this, have your QA team create test cases for each requirement and link those test cases back to the appropriate requirement. Once the team completes the test cases, have a team review those test cases in detail to ensure you have adequate coverage. Software Planner provides a bi-directional traceability report that shows the requirements for a release as well as all test cases and defects associated with each requirement:

You can also view backward traceability from the test cases traceability screen:

Question: How is our test effort trending?

To determine if you are progressing properly in your test cycle, it is important to know how many test cases are still awaiting run, how many have passed and how many have failed. The dashboards tell you this:

We can tell by the graph above that this team is not currently in a QA cycle, as most of the test cases have a passed status so the release was probably just finished up. You can also see that the defect trending is pretty stable at this point.

Question: Who has the most assigned defects?

To determine who has the most assigned defects, you can first look at the defect assignee report:

It displays the information graphically and allows you to double click the graph to see the detailed defects. You can then print them, export them to MS Word/Excel/PDF, or email them to others.

Question: What is our history with project variances?

It is important to learn from each project you do. By analyzing project variances, you can improve future estimates. You can first see estimate vs. actual for each of your projects by looking at the project plan screen:

Software Planner also provides a number of variance reports that also analyze this at a team member level:

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This white paper just skimmed the surface as to the quality of metrics provided by Software Planner, there are many more dashboards and reports available. If you wish to learn more about Software Planner or receive a personalized demo of the product, contact AutomatedQA at +1 303-768-7480. If you haven't tried Software Planner, be sure to download and try it today. You can also learn more at SoftwarePlanner.com.