Metrics

We use MQC (Mercury Quality Center) to store our defects and enhancements. We have about a year's worth of data in there and no one has thought to look and see what it tells us. I recently undertook such an effort. I export ALL defects/enhancements from MQC into an Excel file which is then parsed by an Access Database. I then wrote various queries to examine the data.

Here are some metrics that I want to examine after each release of our software to see how we are doing:

1) # of Outstanding Defects as of completion of this release ; broken down by severity and what version they were found in [to see how long they've been lying around]

2) # of Outstanding Enhancements to be implemented; broken down by priority and when they were requested [to see how long they've been lying around]

3) Breakdown of Defects/Enhancements for this latest release by Component to see which component of the software was touched the most.

4) Average [Mean, Median, & mode] Time to Fix a Defect [Critical, High, Medium, Low] until now

5) Average [Mean, Median & mode] Time to Implement a New Request [Critical, High, Medium, Low] until now

NOTE: If we apply Metrics 4 & 5 after each release, we can see if the average decreases over time to see if we're getting faster at delivering fixes and enhancements.

These metrics are pretty simple but will give us terrific information on where we are and what we need to work on to improve our process.