6th Sense Analytics Automates Individual and Aggregated Metrics for Users of Komodo IDE 4.0
Morrisville, NC AND Vancouver, BC -- March 26, 2007 -- 6th Sense Analytics, a pioneer in improving software development metrics, and ActiveState, the leading provider of tools and services for dynamic languages, today jointly announced a co-marketing and distribution partnership. Under the terms of the agreement, ActiveState will distribute 6th Sense Analytics' automated software development metrics solution from its Komodo community website.
Read More
CMP Technology today announced that 6th Sense Analytics was a 2007 winner of the Jolt Productivity Award for the Project Management category.
6th Sense was a finalist for the Jolt Product Excellence Award, which went to Rally Software, who participated in our recent webcast, "Making Software Development Metrics Work." This is the second win for Rally in as many years. We're big Rally fans, so we're celebrating for them as well. For vendors in the software development market, the Jolts are like the Oscars. It's an exceptional honor to be associated with this award.
The Outsourcing Debate: Are Our Fears Misplaced?
6th Sense CEO and Chairman Greg Burnell has been published on Enterprise Networks & Servers regarding the outsourcing debate.
Greg writes "Should outsourcing be feared? You be the judge. But in the final analysis, I believe you'll conclude that outsourcing is proving to be a productive contributor to today's changing business models. While it shouldn't inspire fear, outsourcing does introduce some new business risks organizations must be prepared to deal with."
Chris Kanaracus has written a brief article about 6th Sense Analytics for Redmond Developer News. Chris quotes senior Forrester analyst Carey Schwaber saying "Lots of people are doing dashboards, but nobody else is doing the automatic collection of data. Most tools that use dashboards really require a lot of legwork on the back-end."
This is the second part of a two part review of questions asked during a recent webcast on Making Metrics Work. The first part is here.
Q: Todd ran through some interesting metrics. What are the most impactful 2nd generation metrics an IT dept. can start with?
As we discussed during the event, a key characteristic of a 2G metrics program is selecting a small number of highly meaningful metrics to track. Measuring for the sake of doing so is costly and it leads to thrashing and poor decision-making. With that said, one of the foundational metrics of a 2G program is tracking the investment profile--understanding where effort is being expended and whether or not that aligns to priorities and expectations. Time equals investment and every investment has a direct and an opportunity cost. So it is important to know where time is being spent across your teams, activities and project portfolio. Of course this is probably not the only metric you'll want to track. Many organizations combine the sort of activity-based data we create with outcomes-related data, such as defects open/closed and code check-ins. Together, this provides a complete view into productivity. There are certainly other metrics that organizations will want to track, but it is difficult to generalize because they're often unique to the circumstances and context of an organization. For example, many organizations closely track test and quality metrics as a basis for understanding the state and status of their projects.
Read More
Last week, we hosted a very well attended webcast and panel discussion called "Making Software Development Metrics Work: A Framework for a 2nd Generation Metrics Model." The event featured PJ Connolly from SD Times; Bob Galen, author of Software Endgames; Todd Olson, co-founder & CTO of 6th Sense Analytics; and Zach Neis, VP of product development at Rally Software. If you weren't able to attend, you can watch a replay here. In total, we had nearly 100 questions, many of which we covered during the discussion. Others will be answered by e-mail, and through a series of blog posts. Here is the first set:
Q: How does 6th Sense collect the base data? Do you need any tool like a time reporting system to do that?
Actually, that is part of the unique value of the 6th Sense solution--the data is automatically gathered based on the execution of the software development process. We embed a very lightweight sensor in the developers' toolset and capture data about how, where and to what extent time is being spent by activity (e.g., coding vs. editing vs. debugging), project or team.
Read More
Vance McCarthy of Integrated Developers News recently interviewed Todd Olson, co-founder and CTO of 6th Sense Analytics regarding the value of metrics in software development.
Read the full article here:
http://www.idevnews.com/CaseStudies.asp?ID=216
6th Sense Analytics CEO Greg Burnell contributed the following tip on making outsourcing relationships work to BusinessWeek.com's Small Business Tips of the Day column:
"Companies without an outsourcing strategy are missing out on the cost and skill advantages of an increasingly flat world. But sending key projects and business processes offshore introduces new risk by undermining visibility and control. The reality is that you can't manage what you can't measure, which means that a metrics program is critical to making outsource relationships work.
Beware of outsourcers who would prefer to keep you at arm's length, and insist on a collaborative partnership based on transparency, trust, and openness."
