BOULDER - Rally Software Development Corp. is teaming with software development organizations on research to create the Software Development Performance Index.

Representatives from Boulder-based Rally Software, the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and software development organizations are joining forces to quantify insights about development work and provide feedback on how process and technology decisions impact development-team performance.

The index will aggregate a set of metrics from the areas of productivity, predictability, responsiveness, quality, customer satisfaction and employee engagement.

"Better measurement and analytics leads to better insight, which can lead to better decisions, which can, in turn, lead to better outcomes," said Rally's director of analytics, Larry Maccherone. "The key is to start by identifying the right outcomes and the Software Development Performance Index measures are being formulated to provide the outcome feedback."

The institute has been pursuing its own research into the effectiveness of Agile practices, said Dave Zubrow, manager of Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis at the institute. "When we learned that Rally had already made good progress toward measuring and analyzing software development practices in relation to cost, schedule and quality impact, it became obvious that we would both benefit by collaborating."

Rally invites interested organizations to join the research effort. Participating customers gain immediate access to enhancements resulting from the research program, including dashboards, balanced scorecards and benchmarking capabilities.