1st Edition

The ROI from Software Quality

By Khaled El Emam Copyright 2005
    296 Pages 63 B/W Illustrations
    by Auerbach Publications

    The ROI from Software Quality provides the tools needed for software engineers and project managers to calculate how much they should invest in quality, what benefits the investment will reap, and just how quickly those benefits will be realized. This text provides the quantitative models necessary for making real and reasonable calculations and it shows how to perform ROI analysis before and after implementing a quality program. The book demonstrates how to collect the appropriate data and easily perform the appropriate ROI analysis.

    Taking an evidence-based approach, this book supports its methodology with large amounts of data and backs up its positioning with numerous case studies and straightforward return-on-investment calculations. By carefully substantiating arguments, this volume separates itself from other works on ROI.

    Introduction
    Profiting from Defects
    Losing from Defects
    Investing in Quality
    The Benefits of Software Quality Practices
    Using Return-On-Investment (ROI) Analysis

    Measuring Software Quality
    Definition of Quality
    Types of Defects
    The Defect Life Cycle
    Defect Undercounting
    Interpreting Defect Counts
    Defects and Corporate Evolution
    Defect Classification

    Software Quality Practices
    Software Inspections
    Risk Assessment Using Metrics
    Test-Driven Development
    Automatic Defect Detection
    Other Practices

    The State of the Practice
    Quality Assurance (QA) Function
    Metrics
    Testing
    Software Inspections
    Tools
    Limitations

    A Software Quality Benchmark
    Data Sources
    Benchmarks
    Summary

    Quality and the Cost of Ownership
    A Definition of Customer Costs
    Savings from Higher-Quality Software
    Benchmarking Customer Costs
    Discussion

    Quality and the Cost to Developers
    Project Costs
    The Payoff from Cost Reductions
    Reducing Rework Costs

    Quality and Profitability
    Product Positioning
    Revenue and Quality
    Quality and Profit
    Improving Productivity

    Calculating Return-On-Investment
    Cost Savings
    Schedule Benefits
    The ROI Evaluation Process
    Discounting
    Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis
    Subjective Distributions
    Interpreting the ROI Values
    Payback Period

    Example ROI Calculations
    Context
    Introducing Code Inspections
    Evaluating Code Inspections after Deployment
    Automatic Defect Detection Tools
    Risk Assessment
    Test-Driven Development
    Multiple Practices

    The Quality of Open Source Software
    Adoption of OSS
    The OSS Advantage
    The Cost of Adopting OSS
    Comparing OSS and CSS Software Reliability
    Comparing OSS and CSS on Security

    Making the Business Case
    Wariness about Initial Investments
    Length of Payback Period
    Hardware Culture
    Software Culture
    Time-to-Market Is King
    Summary

    APPENDICES
    A Definition of Application Domains
    Military Software
    Systems Software
    Commercial Software
    MIS (Management Information Systems)

    B Overview of the Data Sets
    The ISBSG Data Set
    The MIT Data Set

    C The Effectiveness and Efficiency of Software Inspections
    Effectiveness of Defect Detection Activities
    Average Effort per Defect

    D Backfiring Table

    E The ROI Model
    Definitions
    Defect Detection Stages
    The Customer Cost Savings Model
    The Financial ROI Model
    Schedule ROI
    Defaults
    Illustration
    Assumptions and Limitations

    F Evaluating Schedule Reduction

    G Expecting and Interpreting Evidence
    The SW-CMM Example
    Evidence in Software Engineering

    Biography

    Khaled El Emam