Metrics in distributed product development

Nowadays the products are increasingly developed globally in collaboration between subcontractors, third party suppliers and in-house developers. However, management of a distributed product development project is proven to be more challenging and complicated than traditional one-site development. From the viewpoint of project management, the measurements and metrics are important activities for successful product development. This paper is focused on describing a set of metrics that is successfully used in industrial practice in distributed product development. Based on the experiences, the reasoning for selecting these metrics was similar: they are easy to capture and can be quickly calculated and analysed on a regular interval. One of the most important reasons for choosing these metrics was that they were aimed especially to provide early warning signals, i.e., means to proactively react to potential issues in the project. This is especially important in distributed projects, where specific means to track project status are needed.