Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Companies must choose a balanced mix of metrics to get the true picture of how their application development (AD) organizations are functioning. Many IT organizations do not or cannot measure their development teams' productivity, quality, or cost effectiveness, yet they are being asked to improve all three dimensions. The Balanced Scorecard model provides an effective framework for choosing a blend of metrics that address the operational excellence (i.e., quality, productivity, and costs), user orientation, business value, and future orientation of the AD organization. After selecting a balanced set of metrics, AD teams can use a mix of automated tools and manual processes to collect and analyze the information, and then develop appropriate improvement programs. The times have changed and quality and productivity improvement won't cut it for most organizations. AD managers must move out of their comfort zone of measuring these traditional operational excellence metrics and redirect their focus to measuring the value that they're delivering to their customers and to the business.