The first step in improving the programming development process was learning how to make and meet schedules and estimates. Having acquired the ability to predict resources and produce consistent results, programming is now in position to make significant further advances. Humphrey IBM System Journal, Vol. Having read the article by Maj. According to Watts Humphrey, the first step to improve the software development process is to achieve predictability.
Many experts believe that predictability is unattainable.
Conventional wisdom is that projects at best can meet only two of the four major project commitments. With the nine best practices recommended by the Airlie Software Council and new metric-based scheduling and management tools, predictability is very possible. Metric-based scheduling and management are essential elements to predictability. The key concept in metric-based scheduling and management is that the software products with similar project, product, process and method, technology, and resource characteristics will share similar organizational experiences. These similar experiences will result in similar metric relationships, algorithms, and project-specific parametric models.