Software doesn't have visible artifacts in the same way a highway construction or an environmental cleanup project does. The tangible evidence of progress in a software project can be visible through a user interface or a report, but the mechanisms used to produce this evidence are removed by one or two layers from the physical world of human touch.
What this means to a software project manager is that measures of progress are removed from physical touch as well. Counting parts, measuring tons of dirt, or surveying the landscape for changes in elevation are not possible in a software project.
Another means is needed to measure progress. The most common is the measurement of effort or the number of lines of code or the number of features produced as a function of time. But these features, no matter how they are represented are at least one level removed from the tangible entity - the code. They are several levels removed from their human use - the business processes they implement.
Measuring Capabilities
The artifact of a software system is the capability it provides the business when it is complete. If we measure only the effort consumed in the tasks of the project then the connection to the capability is missing.
The tangible evidence of a software project can be made physically visible in the same way driving on a highway, walking in an environmentally clean field or flying to orbit in a spacecraft. In the software project, the completion of the feature is still one level removed from the capability. The feature must be put to work to produce the value, control a flight path, or measure a molecule.
Without defining the desired capability, there is no tangible means of measuring progress other than by the expenditure of time and money and the accumulation of source code.
Strategy Based Measurement
In a strategy focused organization (see Kaplan and Norton) connecting capabilities with objectives is critical to the assessment of the hypothesis of a strategy.
Strategy = Objectives: Mini marts can increase EBIT for the same or near same operating costs as selling gasoline only
Testing the strategy requires not only market analysis and store placement but actually building stores and assessing their performance.
In software projects, capability based planning and performance assessment provides the connection between strategy and the results of the development effort - execution.
Capabilities are the Tangible Outcomes of Projects
Measure the maturity of a capability using Significant Accomplishments and their Accomplishment Criteria instead of effort expended toward tasks and you'll be on the way to measuring tangible progress directly connected to the value of the business.
