Quality Metrics for Hybrid Software Development Organizations – A Case Study

As the software industry transitions from a license-based model to a subscription-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, many software development organizations are transforming to a hybrid development model using agile and CI/CD practices for some products while continuing to use waterfall methods for other products. The traditional metrics used for measuring software quality in the waterfall or agile paradigms do not apply to this hybrid organization. Our paper presents a framework for defining a comprehensive set of quality metrics for hybrid organizations. The metrics we define are for all major milestones during the software development life cycle and are effective for all development methodologies. This framework has been implemented by all on-prem products in Cisco Systems, Inc.