Task: Report on Asset
Provide summaries of asset and other repository activities.
Disciplines: Asset-Based Development
Purpose
Deliver activity measurements to managers for governance and management functions.
Relationships
Main Description

There are many kinds of metrics to track. Some metrics are tracked by the Repository, others are tracked by other tools or roles. These metrics can come from various sources, such as:

  • Asset Consumers
  • Asset Owners/Producers/Reviewers
  • Repository
  • Derived for Managers

Asset Consumer metrics generally include qualitative metrics, such as reusability ratings (4 out of 5 stars) or text feedback in the form of comments and discussions. Typically these metrics are stored on the Repository.

Asset Owners/Producers/Reviewers tend to create asset-level metrics. These include metrics such as anticipated level of effort for an Asset Consumer to use the asset, and the level of effort to create a given version of an asset. The metrics also include size, such as number of bytes, lines of code, or number of components. Typically these metrics are stored with the asset in the Repository.

Repository metrics are largely quantitative. These include metrics such as number of downloads for a given asset version, number of searches and kinds of searches, number of browses from searches, as well as information on which Asset Consumers conducted certain downloads. Some of the other metrics may be repository activity over a period of time, such as, number of repository accesses, or asset submissions and so forth over a period of time. The Repository can also track number of problems or defects associated with an asset.

In general, Repositories are not tracking the cost side of asset development. This is typically tracked in project management and financial reporting tools. Bringing together the metrics from Asset Consumers, Asset Owners/Producers/Reviewers and the Repository with costing metrics gives a foundation for derived metrics. Some of these metrics include project reuse percentage, project productivity gains, and return on investment.

Steps
Practitioners provide values
As described earlier, the Asset Owner, Reviewer and Consumer provide both qualitative and quantitative values on assets.
Repository and Assets Used
Managers, administrators, and Asset Owners, Reviewers and Consumers interact with the repository and the assets, thereby creating the basis for generating reports.
Generate Report

Reports may be generated graphically or textually. The metrics may be exported from the Repository into reporting tools, or the Repository may render the reports.

Managers often requires reports on a periodic basis, which generally means Repositories need a way to run reporting jobs and send them to the appropriate stakeholders.

Repositories should be integrated with portfolio and project management tools to aid the generation of derived metrics.

More Information