Optimizing productivity

In software development projects performance can be studied through productivity and quality of the application. They are like two sides of the same coin as poor performance in any one of these two can affect the overall performance. High productivity with low quality (i.e. high delivered defects) can make the application dysfunctional and similarly, high delivered quality with low productivity (smaller size of the application) can have the risk of omission of many functionalities. In this thesis, therefore, both productivity and defects are considered. In software development, role of equipment, capital and other factors of production play a relatively nominal role vis-à-vis skilled manpower. In fact, manpower that is measured in this industry in terms of effort spent or a man month of effort is in fact the single largest factor contributing to the application output. Accordingly productivity measure is defined by size of the application developed (measured in Function Point units) divided by total man months of effort spent for such development.