I am on the corporate side providing oversight on a large consulting vendor/partner. I have been researching a couple of cost measures to see if my current costs on this “successful” project are truly in line with industry standards. The subject areas are:
1)Percentage of Project Management overhead costs to the total software development costs.
2)Number of project management employees to development and QA employee ratio.
3)Percentage of operations costs to the total software development costs.
My current research online and through the Gigatels, Forresters, Metas, and the like is that there is no standard measurement. The consensus seems to be that it is all due to the complexity of the project, number of platforms, etc. Our project is on a common platform, multiple iterations of a common configurable application, some additional (although limited) custom application work, and hosted through a common web portal. Each iteration of the application ( configuration, testing, and deployment) seems to take 60-90 days, involve a Project Manager, one to two consultants, two QA people, and a cost that seems to be flat & high despite lessons learned and efficiencies gained.
I have found in the past that anecdotal information from my peers sometimes can be more enlightening than canned reports/papers where the authors explain little or commit to nothing.
Anyone out there wish to share their insight.