QSM Database Now Includes More Than 13,000 Completed Projects

QSM is pleased to announce a major update to the QSM Database, the largest continuously-updated software project performance metrics database in the world. With this update, we have validated and added more than 2,500 projects to the database in 9 major application domains (Avionics, IT, Command & Control, Microcode, Process Control, Real Time, Scientific, System Software, and Telecom) and 45 sub-domains, resulting in a current total of more than 13,000 completed projects.

With this update, the number of agile projects in the database increased by 340%, resulting in some changes to the agile trend line. Specifically:

• The median size of agile projects decreased by 80%.
• Average team sizes for agile projects were higher across the board, and project duration was shorter for all but the largest projects. For smaller agile projects, using larger teams was somewhat effective in reducing schedules, but schedule compression diminished for larger, scaled agile projects.
• For agile projects up to 30,000 lines of code, productivity was higher than the previous trend. Again, the smallest projects saw the biggest productivity gains.
• Finally, agile projects reported dramatically fewer pre-release defects than the previous trend group, but quality at delivery (or mean time to defect) was also lower. This suggests agile teams may be trading off quality for faster time to market.

Though projects were added across application domains, the majority of the new projects added were in the IT application domain, which includes the agile projects. Overall, IT project sizes declined by 25%. 

Since 1978, QSM has been aggregating software project data in order to provide clients with benchmark data, develop better predictive algorithms and to serve as source for the 17 trend lines in the SLIM-Suite of tools.

Learn more about the QSM Database!