Help Yourself by Helping Us
Contributing Data to the DACS
1.0 Benefits to Contributors
The more comprehensive the samples in the ROI Dashboard, the better the results are. You can contribute towards more reliable indicators of the costs and benefits of software technology by contributing data. The collective result of many individual contributions of data is a resource for financial analysis available to all, including yourself.
If you submit data that we can include in the ROI Dashboard, we offer you a choice of a free item from the following list:
- A Business Case for Software Process Improvement (Revised)
- DACS DOD/IT Acronym List on CD ROM
2.0 Accomodation Of Organization Privacy Concerns Although the ROI Dashboard identifies organizations for data collected from the open literature, the DACS will accommodate donors of data who do not want their organization publicly named by masking identifying information in the ROI Dashboard. However, we do need to be able to contact you with questions about your data and to ensure the accuracy of data updates over time. If you do not want your organization name to be available to users of the DACS Dashboard, please so indicate on your submittal form.
Please provide all of the identifying information requested on the form, including characteristics of your software process such as listed below. The DACS guarantees that this information will be used only for the purpose of communication with you regarding any data you provide, and accurately presenting that data in the ROI database.
Please indicate your organization completely, since often different divisions of a single corporation, government agency, or military service may be providing data to us separately.
Useful characteristics include:
- Application domain or industry sector
- Organization size in terms of staff, revenues, etc.
- The time period covered by your data
- Significant historical dates such as date certified as ISO 9001, each SEI CMM or CMMI maturity level, etc.
- Other relevant process characteristics such as programming language, reuse percentage, etc.
3.0 Hiding Company-Proprietary Data
Some organizations are anxious about publishing raw defect counts, costs, productivity, cycle time, etc. The DACS accommodates these concerns by only requiring percentages and ratios. Click here for a list of ways in which some organizations have removed company-proprietary and sensitive information, but still reported the essential data. For example, Motorola Government Electronics Systems reported, in a 1997 IEEE Software article, the data in Table 1. The third column is derived from the first two columns; the absolute schedule length is unnecessary. The DACS can provide assistance, as needed, in sanitizing data for inclusion in the ROI dashboard.
Table 1: Sanitized Cycle Time Data
| CMM Maturity Level
| Ratio of CMM Level 1
Cycle Time To Cycle Time
for Specified CMM Level
| Percent Decrease In Cycle Time From
Previous
Level |
| 1 |
1.0 |
N.A. |
| 2 |
3.2 |
69% |
| 3 |
2.7 |
-19% |
| 4 |
5.0 |
46% |
| 5 |
7.8 |
36% |
4.0 The DACS’s Purpose Is To Disseminate Useful Software Engineering Data
The DACS is a Department of Defense (DoD) Information Analysis Center (IAC). The DACS has been designated as the DoD Software Information Clearinghouse, serving as an authoritative source for state-of-the-art software information providing technical support for the software community. Although the DACS is operated by ITT Industries, Advanced Engineering and Sciences Divisions under a government contract, ITT Industries does not use any data collected by the DACS to improve its competitive posture on proposals for other government contracts. The only access that ITT Industries has to this data is via the ROI Dashboard on the DACS public website.
5.0 ROI Data Submittal Form
To submit data, please fill out our ROI data submittal form.
Copyright 2005 by ITT Industries
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DACS Gold Practice Initiative
ROI Dashboard
