Why participating

Most of the surveys conducted on businesses and public organizations continue to stress that software projects are still too prone to failure. Budget or time overrun events are very common in the market and many software projects are still cancelled before providing any result usable by the commissioners. When a situation of excessive use of budget or time comes true, this can be caused by 3 main factors:
* The resources were underestimated at the beginning of the project;
* The resources were properly estimated at the beginning, but the project was poorly managed and most of them were wasted;
* The resources were properly estimated at the beginning, but the scope of the project has changed in a manner not adequately managed.

The measurement of software can be a great help in improving uncertainties perceptions and helping manage the risks of a project. Some of the reports submitted in this conference will deal with the main theme by providing ideas, methods, tools and references to deepen the relationship between measurement and management of risk.

In addition to the main theme speakers will deal with the classic subjects of the measurement of quality, functional measurement, benchmarking and estimating project cost.

The 2008 Software Measurement Forum covers all these themes:
1. Software Measurement and Project Risk Management
2. Management by metrics
3. Software Quality Measurement
4. Function Point Analysis (IFPUG-COSMIC)
5. Benchmarking and cost estimation

The Istituto Internazionale di Ricerca, the Italian branch of the "Institute for International Research", and DPO (Data Processing Organisation), leader company in software measurement, in cooperation with GUFPI-ISMA and ISIPM are delighted to announce the fifth Software Measurement European Forum, an "unmissable" international conference on software measurement and metrics that takes place in Europe. The first four SMEF conferences were extremely successful from the point of view of both customer satisfaction and the quality of the papers presented.

More information on the previous editions may be found here:
www.dpo.it/smef2004 www.dpo.it/smef2005 www.dpo.it/smef2006 www.dpo.it/smef2007

We are aiming to repeat and build on the past success in 2008. The 2008 Forum offers an ambitious agenda aimed at reviewing good practices, recommendations, tools, techniques and software measurement implementation processes, both within individual organisations and between different contracting partners. The 2008 Software Measurement Forum provides ICT professionals with a unique opportunity in terms of sharing software measurement knowledge and best practices and getting into contact with partners and prospective customers from many regions of the planet.

The Forum 2008 offers, therefore, a program designed to illustrate the best practices, recommendations, tools, techniques and implementation processes of software measurement in order to optimize the processes of planning, negotiation, execution and control of projects and software services.

We have designed a program that allows professionals and managers of large and small companies and public administrations to share:
• case studies and tutorials
• findings, practices, lessons learned
• new concepts, methods and tools
• the most recent advances, products and services
• "state of the art" technologies and advanced experiences worldwide