Leading Indicators of Global Software Competitiveness
Indicator By Level

Accountability and Control
The enterprise understands that it must promote accountability and control within its software operations.

Antitrust Litigation
The ignorance of the nation’s leaders, the litigiousness of the business environment, and the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit combine to make the possibility of a government intervention a risk to be considered.

Best Capability Aligned
The enterprise understands that it must align its best capability with what the customer needs most.

Boldness
The enterprise understands that boldness in the management approach is intended to distinguish the enterprise from the competition, both current and future.

Chaos
The enterprise understands that chaos accompanies innovation as the rate of change gives way to a state of continual flux. Chaos is integral to competitiveness.

Civility
The enterprise understands the importance of establishing and sustaining an atmosphere of civility in the workplace.

Collaborative Research
The enterprise establishes collaborative research relationships with industry partners and universities and understands how to participate for the benefit of the enterprise.

Commitment Management
The enterprise understands that it must make good commitments and keep them.

Commodity View
The enterprise assesses its view of its software operations along a spectrum ranging from commodity to critical resource.

Competitive Intelligence
The enterprise understands the need to systematically gather information for anticipating market developments.

Competitive Wage Structure
The enterprise maintains a competitive wage structure for its software personnel and understands the tradeoffs of outsourcing both domestic and offshore.

Competitors’ Actions
The enterprise understands the degree to which its competitors’ actions determine its direction for improvement.

Conformance to Requirements
The enterprise understands that it must deliver software products that conform to the requirements of the customer and the industry.

Contesting Market Share
The enterprise understands the degree to which its success is dependent on contesting market share.

Customer Bargaining Power
The enterprise understands the degree to which its customers are able to bargain or believe they are able to bargain, the control the enterprise to counter customer bargaining, and the strategies for exercising control.

Customer Expectation
The enterprise understands the degree to which customer expectation determines its direction for improvement.

Customer Loyalty
The enterprise measures customer loyalty in the context of its software operations and products and establishes upper and lower limits for its management and control.

Customer Satisfaction
The enterprise measures customer satisfaction in the context of its software operations and products and establishes upper and lower limits for its management and control.

Defect Free
The enterprise understands that it must operate and deliver defect free software products.

Deliver Value
The enterprise assesses the degree to which its products and services deliver value to its customers and the degree to which software is essential.

Disintermediation
Disintermediation is a term used to describe the “disintegration” or extinction of the middle men in the training chain as we know it today, ie, the distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. In electronic commerce, manufacturers want to trade directly the consumer.

Domain Architecture
The enterprise understands that it must obtain a profound knowledge of its application domain and architecture.

Domestic Outsource
The enterprise considers engaging in some level of domestic outsourcing in order to obtain and sustain this capability.

Employee Morale
The enterprise measures the employee morale of software personnel and establishes a policy with upper and lower control limits for its management and control.

Export Control
The enterprise understands the probability of government imposition of export controls on current and future products.

Financial Report
The enterprise understands the value of its software assets and reports them visibly in its financial reports.

Government Research
The enterprise understands the scope of government research and how to obtain its results for the benefit of the enterprise.

Immigration Policy
The nation’s leaders understand the use of immigration policy to balance supply and demand in personnel resources. Well trained high tech workers accept lower wages and work longer hours.

Innovation
The enterprise understands that innovation in the product is intended to distinguish the enterprise from the competition, current and future.

Integrated Bundle
The enterprise understands the value of integrated bundles and positions software product line components and their organization to enhance competitive position without attracting anti-trust attention.

Intellectual Property
The enterprise understands understands the importance of intellectual propewrty and the need to safeguard it.

Intellectual Property
The enterprise understands the importance of intellectual property and the need to safeguard it.

Investment Contribution
The enterprise includes software in its strategic planning process and the prioritization of organization investment decisions.

Key Employee Status
The enterprise provides key employee status and special benefits and compensation to strategically essential software engineering managers and programmers.

Know Customer Needs
The enterprise understands that it must know what the customer needs most.

Luck
Luck is an integral aspect of the risk-tolerant e-commerce business environment where the process of experimentation paradigm dominates.

Management Ignorance
The enterprise understands that it must select capable software managers who are boundary spanners among disciplines including management, technology, process, and application domain.

Mature Products
The enterprise understands the degree to which its success is dependent on mature products.

Measure Critical Aspects
The enterprise understands that it must measure the critical aspects of current practice.

Modern Software Engineering
The enterprise understands that it must apply modern software engineering practice in the production and maintenance of its software products.

Network Security
The enterprise takes active steps to ensure network security and provides oversight for their effectiveness.

Off-the-Clock Effort
The enterprise measures the off-the-clock effort of software personnel and establishes a policy with upper and lower control limits for its management and control.

Offshore Outsource
The enterprise considers engaging in some level of offshore outsourcing in order to obtain and sustain this capability.

Open Requisitions
The enterprise understands that it must fill its open requisitions.

Open Source
The enterprise understands that an open source policy is intended to expand the niche.

Patent Application
The enterprise understands that paptent application is needed to protect enterprise ownership of innovation.

Personnel Certification
The enterprise establishes and applies a training and experience criteria for each software skill type and level of achievement.

Personnel Overtime
The enterprise measures the overtime of software personnel and establishes a policy with upper and lower control limits for its management and control.

Personnel Turnover
The enterprise measures the turnover of software personnel and establishes a policy with upper and lower control limits for its management and control.

Plan for Lasting Improvement
The enterprise understands that it must plan for lasting improvement.

Predictable Performance
The enterprise understands that it must raise its software process maturity to the capability that delivers predictable performance.

Price Elasticity
The enterprise understands the degree to which it must achieve price elasticity.

Product Line
The enterprise understands that it must achieve product line practice in order to set the industry product standard, control event threats, and control competition.

Product Traceability
The enterprise establishes and sustains product traceability among life cycle artifacts including requirements, specifications, designs, code, and test procedures.

Push Back
The enterprise encourages push back from the supplier and customer in order to ensure that the best possible business and engineering solutions and practices are adopted.

Raise Ability to Improve
The enterprise understands that it must raise its ability to improve software to a core competence.

Release Frequency
The enterprise understands the need to control the frequency of releases. Release frequency may be a week, a month, or a quarter. Short release cycles impact on product traceability and regression testing.

Reuse Technology Practice
The enterprise understands that it must practice software reuse in order to increase span of control.

Selecting Promising Changes
The enterprise understands that it must select the most promising changes for improvement.

Setting Industry Standard
The enterprise understands the degree to which its success is dependent on setting the industry standard for future products.

Shared Vision
The enterprise understands that it must forge a shared vision among producer and consumer.

Software Competitiveness
The enterprise understands the nature and degree of the software contribution to the competitiveness of its products and operations.

Software Failure
The enterprise takes active steps to guard against software failure and to restore operations in the event of failure and provides oversight for their effectiveness.

Software Piracy
The enterprise understands the illegal and destructive practice of software practice and need to involve government in eliminating it.

Software Productivity
The enterprise measures the productivity of its software personnel and understands the upper and lower control limits for tasks of various types and difficulties.

Software Skills
The enterprise understands the software skills it needs and the software skills it possesses.

Span of Responsibility
The enterprise measures the total number of lines of code which its product lines and operation depends upon and the total number of personnel involved in its production, maintenance, and operation.

Staff Churn
The enterprise understands the increasing risk of staff churn, its impact on current operations, and the personnel practices needed to counter it.

Statistical Process Control
The enterprise understands that it must apply statistical process control in the management and engineering of its software operations.

Supplier Bargaining Power
The enterprise understands the degree to which its software suppliers and labor force are able to bargain or believe they are able to bargain for increased rewards, the control the enterprise has over suppliers and its labor force, and the strategies for

Survivability
The enterprise understands the necessity to ensure continuous operation of its critical software operations.

Tax Policy
The enterprise understands the influence that tax policy exerts on business practice.

Threat of New Entrants
The enterprise understands the degree to which there is a threat of new entrants to its market niche, the factors that facilitate and impede new entrants, the control the enterprise has over these factors, and the strategies for exercising control.

Time to Market
The enterprise understands that it must aggressively set and meet time to market goals.

Understand Current Practice
The enterprise understands that it must thoroughly understand its own current practice.

Unionization
The enterprise reviews the prospect for the organization and unionization of software personnel and its posture towards that possibility.

University Research
The enterprise is associated with the university community, understands how to blend its internal research with university programs, and succeeds in motivating the university research agenda to undertake projects.

Usability
The enterprise understands that it must improve usability through successive enhancements over time in an attempt to delight the user.

Venture Capital
The enterprise understands the use of venture capital and the way to structure proposals to obtain it for software initiatives.

View of the Future
The enterprise understands the degree to which its view of the future determines its direction for improvement.

Year 2000 Problem
The enterprise takes active steps to eliminate the Year 2000 problem and provides oversight for their effectiveness.