28-30 January 2004

The need for Software Measurement derives mainly from two different sources. From an internal perspective, an organization needs to understand its processes and products in order to compare its performance with the market’s “best in class” and to improve efficiency and effectiveness of operations – all the main Software Process Improvement frameworks, and even the recent ISO standards, emphasize the relevance of a Measurement System to attain higher levels of maturity and certification. From an external perspective, Software Measurement is unavoidable in a mature contractual relationship, based on a “closed” agreement regarding an incompletely specified product. Any market transaction should be based on the identification of the quantity, quality and delivery time of the product against the economical value. In many of the actual transactions, unfortunately, only the delivery time and sometime a generic statement of quality are described, leaving the evaluation of the quantity to a very “top-level” description of the needed “user requirements”. The latter, unfortunately, are not equally weighted in terms of value and size; so many contracts risk to result ill-founded and to generate a lot of disputes. Software Measurement should assure an optimal way to deal with both these internal and external perspectives of the developing processes and products.

Istituto di Ricerca Internazionale, Italian branch of the Institute for International Research, and Data Processing Organization, the Italian leading company on software measurement – with the support of GUFPI-ISMA – are proud to present the Software Measurement European Forum 2004, willing to establish a new leading international event in Europe about Software Measurement and Metrics, following the experiences gained by people previously involved in FESMA (Federation of European Software Metrics Associations) and ESCOM (European Software Control and Metrics) events.

The Forum, held in Rome (Italy) from 28th to 30th of January 2004, has been a successful event providing opportunity for the ICT professionals to share their knowledge and experiences on Software Measurement and to meet potential customers and partners. Practitioners from different countries have discussed current problems related to the introduction and execution of measurement systems to support the internal and external business perspective but also proposed best practices, tips, tools, techniques and processes for implementing Software Measurement within organizations and between contractors, therefore optimising estimation, planning, negotiation and development processes in both internal contexts and customer-supplier relationships.

We would like to thanks all those who have contributed to this success and particularly the authors who have provided qualified papers and presentations.