Collecting data for comparability: benchmarking software development productivity

Whether you are benchmarking an organization or simply a project, it all boils down to one thing-data. Do you have the necessary data in your company, and is that data valid and comparable? How can you access data from other organizations? To help you answer these questions and avoid some common serious mistakes in the benchmarking process, the author has summarized her practical real-life experiences with software project data collection and benchmarking efforts in the guidelines