In what has been described as a "very brave move", Rubico, the South African-based pioneer of components-based software solutions has committed to submitting its solutions to continuous, third-party, performance evaluations and benchmarking.
According to Bram Meyerson, managing director, QuantiMetrics, the eight-year old Johannesburg-based company that provides a continuous assessment service of software projects, few software vendors, either at local or international level, "have the courage" to subject their projects to such reviews.
"I think it is the most positive thing for Rubico to make this commitment to on-going measurement and improvement. Very few other software houses are prepared to do it.
"Usually, it is only the in-house development groups that subject their projects to this. They`re the people whose heads are on the block - who have to justify implementation costs, overruns and productivity issues to their management," he says.
Rubico, whose client base includes Sanlam, South Deep and the ANC, has already submitted three projects for analysis. QuantiMetrics uses the internationally-developed Performance Enhancement Programme (PEP) and Functional Point Analysis (FPA), an application sizing service that helps to estimate project costs and duration, manage change of scope, measure productivity and communicate functional requirements.
"The purpose of this exercise is not to highlight our strengths, but to expose our weaknesses. We want to be in a position to monitor the effectiveness of whatever improvements we implement on a continuous basis so that we can deliver to world class best practices," says Jay van Zyl, technology and research director, Rubico.
PEP, which was conceived and evolved by CSC, the international think tank, is said to help its members reduce their project effort by over 12%, shorten their project delivery times by about 10% and reduce their error rates by about 10% year on year.
QuantiMetrics, which maintains SA`s only software development benchmarking database and has access to the world`s largest software development benchmarking database, has presented its findings on the three Rubico sample projects completed last year.
Rubico`s overall performance in the three projects was rated considerably higher than similar sized projects against which they were compared. The Rubico Component Assembly approach achieves more than 200 function points per man month compared with an industry average of 50 when using progressive 4GL environments; it took about a third less time to deliver; and, on average, needed 40% of the effort.
Rubico achieves the productivity levels as a result of using one generic set of components which can be adapted to support any business process. Code line customisation is not required on any projects.
However, while a very low number of system testing errors compared to PEP benchmarks were reported, there were more initial operational errors than equivalent benchmarks.
"Based on what I have seen, Rubico`s methodology, technology and delivery can lead to very high predictability of software project delivery, but could come with cost and quality trade-offs against productivity," says Meyerson. "We`re already addressing the shortfalls highlighted and have established a Quality Assurance division internally to drive this. We`re eagerly awaiting our next assessment," concludes Van Zyl.
Share