Successes and challenges experienced in implementing a measurement program in small software organizations

In recent years, the authors have implemented measurement programs in several organizations of different sizes. Two of them were small software companies of approximately 12 employees, which were mostly developers. Although these two organizations were similar in size and technology, the differences in the issues they were facing led to completely different approaches for their measurement program. This paper is about the steps taken to implement these measurement programs, both including functional size measurement with COSMIC, effort, schedule, and defects. It also describes what was done to ensure the success of each program and, most importantly, the challenges that were faced during their implementation and maintenance, as well as some of the solutions proposed to answer these challenges.