Successes and challenges experienced in implementing a measurement program in small software organizations

Trudel, S., Tardif, P.

In recent years, the authors have implemented measurement programs in several
organizations of different sizes. Two of them were small software companies of
approximately 12 employees, which were mostly developers. Although these two
organizations were similar in size and technology, the differences in the issues they
were facing led to completely different approaches for their measurement program.
This paper is about the steps taken to implement these measurement programs,
both including functional size measurement with COSMIC, effort, schedule, and
defects. It also describes what was done to ensure the success of each program and,
most importantly, the challenges that were faced during their implementation and
maintenance, as well as some of the solutions proposed to answer these challenges.