Development of a Quality Management Metric (QMM) measuring software program management quality

Abstract

The quality of software management in a development program is a major factor in determining the success of a program. The four main areas where a software program manager can affect the outcome of a program are requirements management, estimation/planning management, people management, and risk management. By using current researched practices, interviews with senior program managers, and focus group data, the thesis examines the four areas for practices and structure that a software program manager may implement to positively affect the program. The thesis develops a Quality Management Metric (QMM) to measure the performance of the software manager. The QMM score is determined via a survey consisting of a two part questionnaire for each of the four main areas examined. The thesis evaluated three software programs for a QMM score. Informal verification and validation of the metric compared the QMM percentile score to an overall program success score and yielded positive correlation. The establishment of this methodology to quantify the quality of software management is an important step in evaluation of how past and current programs are managed and can serve as a template to improve software management performance in the future.