Software Measurement: What's in It for Me?

Recently I attended a conference where I heard a lot of software quality and process professionals lamenting the fact that the software measurement programs they were responsible for were doomed to failure. Further discussion led me to believe that the problem wasn't poorly conceived or executed measurement programs, but poorly accepted ones.

The biggest obstacle to implementing a successful software measurement program is getting the software professionals, the ones in the trenches designing, coding, documenting and testing the software, to measure their work.

To many software developers, not only is there no obvious incentive, there is actually the disincentive of having their output scrutinized and possibly misunderstood. Who wants his boss to know that the guy in the next cubicle wrote more code than he did last week? If we are to make measurement programs work we need to make sure that the software professionals we are asking to measure understand the personal and professional