Superior software productivity requires a relentless focus on people, motivation, and communication. In Improving Software Development Productivity,   world-renowned software engineering expert Dr. Randall W. Jensen introduces a proven, quantitative approach to achieving this focus. Jensen helps you measure your organization’s capacity and productivity, and then use that information to improve multiple facets of developer and team performance, and to build more accurate estimates and schedules.

Focusing on management as the principal cost and schedule driver in software projects, he demonstrates a powerful tool based on his Jensen II (Seer) model: the model that underlies many leading software estimation tools. Through real case studies, you’ll learn how to predict the productivity impact of any major management decision, and quantitatively support a transition to “extreme” or “agile” software development environments.

For decades, Jensen has been the industry’s go-to expert on improving software project productivity. This book distills his insights and gives you the tools and knowledge to apply them.

This book will help you

• Recognize the centrality of communication and culture, and translate this awareness into quantitative improvements
• Predict the impact of changes in personnel, management style, development environments, product constraints, and technologies
• Optimize decision making throughout a project’s lifecycle, and avoid counterproductive changes
• Understand modern estimating models and parameters, so you can apply them more effectively
• Formulate more accurate and useful estimates with leading tools such as Sage, REVIC, COCOMO II, and SEER-SEM
• Maintain firmer control over costs and timeframes in agile or extreme project environments

Register your book for access to the Capability Calculator, a Microsoft Excel tool created by the author and based on the Jensen II (Seer) model. Go to informit.com/title/9780133562675.

Randall W. Jensen first performed productivity improvement experiments as a freshman EE student in 1955. He went on to earn his Ph.D. and worked to find ways to improve productivity in the Hughes Aircraft Company’s Space and Communications Group. Simultaneously, he was asked to develop a computer model to estimate the cost and schedule for large software development projects. The resulting computer model provided a tool that development managers can use to measure organization capability and quantitatively predict the productivity impact of management decisions related to personnel, management style, and the development environment. The key productivity attributes—which he and Chuck Tonies published in their 1979 book, Software Engineering—were communications, management, and technology. His research into productivity since then led in 1990 to an improved computer-based estimating model, based on the three attributes and this text.