Measurement-as-a-Service - A New Way of Organizing Measurement Programs in Large Software Development Companies

Modern software development companies focus on their primary business objectives, delivering customer value and customer satisfaction which often leads to prioritization of core business areas over such areas as measurement. Although the companies recognize the need and importance of software measurement, they often do not have the competence and/or time to focus on software measurement. In this paper we address the challenge of optimizing the measurement processes in modern companies by using cloud computing and by providing measurement (process) as a service for core business of the companies. Similar to the concept of Software-as-a-Service we define the concept Measurement-as-a-Service and describe how to organize a measurement program according to this definition. The Measurement-as-a-Service concept is well-aligned with measurement programs developed according to ISO/IEC 15939 and can help the companies to increase the benefits obtained from the efficient use of metrics.