Measurement program success factors revisited

Success factors for measurement programs as identified in the literature ty pically focus on the 'internals' of the measurement program; incremental im plementation, support from management, a well-planned metric framework. and so on. However. for a measurement program to be successful within its larg er organizational context, it has to generate value for the organization. T his implies that attention should also be given to the proper mapping of so me identifiable organizational problem onto the measurement program, and th e translation back of measurement results to organizational actions. We hav e extended the well-known 'internal' success factors for software measureme nt programs with four 'external' success factors. These success factors are aimed at the link between the measurement program and the usage of the mea surement results. In this paper, we show how this combined set of internal and external success factors explains the success or failure of five indust rial measurement programs. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserv ed.