The Department conducted two separate exercises to benchmark software development performance on 14 projects undertaken between 1992-93 and 1997-98. Ten of the projects involved national tax systems and four were for specialist offices. They included mainframe and mid-range systems developed by traditional means and by newer procedures with users and developers working more closely together, for example using rapid application development techniques. EDS provided data on the outputs from the projects and the staff inputs.
The Business and Management Services Division's operational research specialists compared the sample of projects against a database of 400 software developments compiled by the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group. The Department also commissioned an independent company specialising in the measurement of software development, to compare the 14 projects with a database of 4,000 public and private sector software developments conducted in the UK and overseas.
Both studies compared:
■ the productivity of the developments, measured by staff days per function point;
■ the delivery rate of software, measured in function points produced per month.