Benchmarking: Comparing Apples to Apples
Frank W. Vogelezang, Harold van Heeringen · Apress eBooks · 2019
For almost every organization, software development is becoming more and more important. The ability to develop and to release new functionality to the users and customers as fast as possible, is often one of the main drivers to gain a competitive edge. However, in the software industry, there is a huge difference in productivity between the best and the worst performers. Productivity can be a crucial element for many organizations (as well as cost efficiency, speed and quality) to bring their competitiveness in line with their most relevant competitors. Benchmarking is the process of comparing your organization’s processes against industry leaders or industry best practices (outward focus) or comparing your own teams (inward focus). Benchmarking gives insight into best practices, with the aim to understand if and how one should improve to stay or become successful. Software development benchmarking can be done on any scale that is comparable: a sprint, a release, a project or a portfolio.