Benchmarking of IT Projects

Metrics are ideally suited for comparing IT projects and learning by comparison. This should be the goal of benchmarking: locating one’s organizational situation and defining purposeful measures for its optimization on IT projects and finding opportunities for the organization to learn and move ahead in its project management capability.

The main question of benchmarking is how we can learn from other organizations in order to improve our own organization. In this chapter, we present concepts for benchmarking and introduce some of the publications available from the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group, ISBSG, (www.isbsg.org) and other IT benchmarking resources. Note: The ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 standards group (see chapter on measurement organizations) approved at their Berlin plenary meeting in May 2008 a new work item (NWI) to standardize IT Project Performance Benchmarking: ISO/IEC 29155, to create an IT project benchmarking framework. This project will likely include several sub-projects and will include some form of the draft standard for a benchmarking process developed by ISBSG in 2007. Pekka Forselius of Finland is the editor of this project, with Carol Dekkers of the USA and Jacky Takahashi of Japan as project co-editors. ISBSG will participate as an active category C liaison to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 and the working group responsible for the project as it moves forward.