Ratio of Software Testers to Software Developers

Kathy Iberle (Hewlett-Packard) and Sue Bartlett (IIS/STEP Technology) have developed a model to determine the ratio of software testers to software developers.   The following comes from the abstract of their paper “Estimating Tester to Developer Ratios (or Not)”.

Test managers often need to make an initial estimate of the number of people that will be required to test a particular product, before the information or the time to do a detailed task breakdown is available. One piece of data that is almost always available is the number of developers that are or will be working on the project in question. Common sense suggests that there is a relationship between the number of testers and the number of developers.  This article presents a model that can be used in describing that relationship. It is a heuristic method for predicting a ratio of testers to developers on future projects. The method uses the model to predict differences from a baseline project. A reader with some projects behind her will be able to come up with a rule-of-thumb model to suit her most common situations, to understand when the model might not give accurate answers and what additional factors might need to be taken into consideration.

In the paper the authors present two case studies: (1) “MergoApp”, a e-commerce website where the tester-developer ratio was 1:4, and (2)“DataApp”, a database application to replace an Excel application, where the actual tester-developer ratio was 4:8. A copy of their model can be found at Kathy Iberle’s web site (http://www.kiberle.com/articles.htm).   In addition, slides for the presentation can be found here: Estimate Slides.

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Database Administrators (DBA) Staffing and Workload

Venkat S. Devraj, co-founder and CTO of database and application automation software provider Stratavia and author of Oracle 24×7 Tips & Techniques (McGraw-Hill), had the following to say about the number of DBA’s necessary to administer an Oracle DB environment:

Every so often, I come across IT Managers bragging that they have a ratio of “50 DB instances to 1 DBA” or “80 DBs to 1 DBA”… — Is that supposed to be good? And conversely, is a lower ratio such as “5 to 1” necessarily bad? Compared to what? In response, I get back vague assertions such as “well, the average in the database industry seems to be “20 to 1”.

Venkat recommends a benchmarking approach:

The reality is, a unidimensional *and* subjective ratio, based on so-called industry best practices, never reveals the entire picture. A better method (albeit also subjective) to evaluate and improve DBA effectiveness would be to establish the current productivity level (“PL”) as a baseline, initiate ways to enhance it and carry out comparisons on an ongoing basis against this baseline. Cross-industry comparisons seldom make sense, however the PL from other high-performing IT groups in similar companies/industries may serve as a decent benchmark.

Finally, Venkat recommends developing a 2X2 matrix where an “Environmental Complexity Score” is charted against a  “Delivery Maturity Score”.  Your PL depends on where you land in the 2X2 matrix. If you picture the X-Y chart as comprising 4 quadrants (left top, left bottom, right top and right bottom), the left top is “Bad”, the left bottom is “Mediocre”, the right top is “Good” and the right bottom is “Excellent”.

For a full description of Mr. Devraj’s approach, see: Selective Deliberations on Databases, Data Center Automation & Cloud Computing

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The Cloud and IT Staffing Ratios

According to a ZDNet article (by John Hazard, March 9, 2011) “IT manager jobs to staff jobs in move to the Cloud“:

The typical IT organization usually maintains manager-to-staff ratio of about 11 percent (that number dips to 6 or 7 percent in larger companies), said John Longwell, vice president of research for Computer Economics. The ratio has been volatile for four years, according to the Computer Economics recently released study, IT management and administration staffing ratios. As businesses adjusted to the recession, they first eliminated staff positions, raising the ratio to its peak of 12 percent in 2009. In 2010, businesses trimmed management roles as well, lowering the ratio to 11 percent, Longwell said. But the long term trend is toward a higher ratio of managers-to-staff ratio, he told me.

“Over the longer term, though, I think we will see a continued evolution of the IT organizations toward having more chiefs and fewer Indians as functions move into the cloud or become more automated.”

For a complete copy of the article see: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/it-manager-jobs-to-staff-jobs-in-move-to-the-cloud/45808?tag=content;search-results-rivers

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Virtualization and Admin/Server Ratio

In a Computerworld (Australia) article entitled “Is there best practice for a server to system administrator ratio?”  from July 9, 2010, the following was reported:

“We have observed that it can be, for example with a physical server, as low as 10 per admin, and for virtual servers as many as 500,” Gartner analyst, Errol Rasit, said. “But it really depends on the type of application. We have seen as an example from a particular customer – from some of our larger customers – that they had their admins managing 15 physical servers and when that moves to virtualisation it moves to something like 75 virtual servers.

To give you a different order of magnitude in another example one admin was looking at 50 physical servers and then moving to 250 virtual servers. I will say that we have seen maybe 500 or 600 virtual servers being managed by a single admin.

IDC meanwhile notes that in Australia the ratio for an SMB would vary greatly from a hoster and again to a cloud provider like Amazon or Microsoft. The analyst house’s statistics suggest anywhere from 10,000:1 at a dominant vendor like Google down to the SMB average of 30:1 for physical boxes and 80:1 for virtual machines.

One enterprise IT manager told us the ratio for physical servers was roughly 50:1, another working for a government organisation said 15-20:1, and an IT director at a research and development outfit noted that in a mid-size organisation a system administrator could maintain 10-14 servers per week or if their role was merely maintenance (i.e. no projects, no debugging, etc) then they could look after 25-35 servers per week. The IT director added a bigger organisation with larger economies of scale could potentially increase the ration to 10-14 servers to each admin per day with staff dedicated to just maintenance.

One of the key factors in increasing the ratio, however, is how much automation can be rolled into the maintenance / management of the server farm.

“A lot of what changes the ratio in the physical world is the types of tools being used to automate a lot of the processes; so run book automation and these sorts of things,” Gartner’s Rasit said. “That tends to be the main differentiator. The problem with virtualisation and virtualisation tools is there are a lot of them. It is very, very easy for a lot of customers to try and automate everything and that doesn’t necessarily always bear fruit for the organisation because they are spending too much time doing that.

A complete copy of the article can be found: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/352635/there_best_practice_server_system_administrator_ratio_/

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IT Metric With Meaning – IT Headcount to Free Cash Flow

Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research in Gartner Executive Programs, suggests replacing the IT budget / revenue ratio with a metric that has meaning – like IT headcount to Free Cash Flow.  That is a metric one CIO is using and it makes more sense because it can be managed.

He suggests measuring IT headcount because more than 70% of most IT budgets are already contractually committed – effectively removing them for short-term management changes.  IT headcount is the result of factors the CIO can control, like the level of automation, the skill of their people, the structure of their operations and the nature of their IT investment budget.

McDonald suggests that free cash flow is a better numerator, as it is more indicative of a company’s health.  Management can influence free cash slow and manage it to some extent in either a strong or weak economies.  Case in point; look at organizations building cash in the recession.  Free cash flow is also something that IT can influence as IT systems integrate process and information flows which improves end-to-end process and cash performance.

It is harder to measure, free cash flow and IT headcount, but it should produce a clearer signal and inform better management decisions and actions.

See full article: http://blogs.gartner.com/mark_mcdonald/2010/04/06/it-spend-as-a-percent-of-revenue-%E2%80%93-a-dubious-metric-at-best/

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IT Staffing Benchmark Metrics

In a presentation entitled “Staffing Strategies for the 21stCentury” by Katherine Spencer Lee, Executive Director at Robert Half Technology (September 18, 2008), the following IT staffing metrics were presented:

A Robert Half Technology* survey asked 1,400 CIOs to compare …
Actual versus ideal ratio of internal end-users to technical support employees at their company

• Mean response for Actual was 136:1
• Mean response for Ideal was 82:1

Technical Support Center staffs are 40 percent smaller, on average, than optimal.

Mobile vs Static staffing ratios:

• There is a baseline ratio around 90 customers per analyst.
• Technical and mobile user bases earn a lower ratio due to higher complexity (1:80-110)
• Fewer analysts required for non-technical and static users (1:120-160)

Organizational goals should help set staffing levels:

1. Compete at the cutting edge of innovation (25:1 to 50:1)
2. Compete on full service and overall value (60:1 t0 100:1)
3. Compete on thin cost margin and scalability (125:1 to 200:1)

A complete copy of the Robert Half presentation can be found here.

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Predicting IT Staffing Sizes

This is the most comprehensive study that I have seen on IT Staffing.  It was written by Lon D. Gowen, Ph.D., Lead Systems and Software Engineer at the MITRE Corporation.  The paper is entitled “Predicting Staffing Sizes for Maintaining Computer-Networking Infrastructures”.  It was published in 2000.

In this paper Gowan presents benchmark data for the “Number of Users Per FTE of CNI Support” for

1. Systems Administration
2. Help Desk
3. Break/Fix
4. Configuration Management

These numbers were observed in both a DoD and a Private sector enviroment.  Acutal numbers are presented in the paper and are compared to numbers predicted using a COTS modeling tool.

Full paper available at: Predicting Staffing Levels

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7 Benchmarks for IT Investments

Seven spending benchmarks are used to help university campuses evaluate IT services. By benchmarking against institutions with similar missions, IT leaders can gain insights into how to best optimize these investments.

Benchmark #1 – Budget Profile [shows how IT dollars are allocated across institutional budget classifications]
Benchmark #2 – Budget Support Level [IT dollars are normalized for institutional size]
Benchmark #3 – Budget Impact [ratio of IT budget to total institution budget]
Benchmark #4 – People Supported per IT Staff
Benchmark #5 – Computers Supported per IT Staff
Benchmark #6 – Staffing Profile Per Service Area
Benchmark #7 – Computer Availability

This article shows actual benchmark results in these areas. Compiled by David Smallen and Karen Leach at Hamilton College. Published in Educause Quarterly in November 2002. The article can be found:

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0234.pdf

This report was followed up by a 32 page paper entitled “INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BENCHMARKS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS” (written by Smallen and Leach) which was published by the Council of Independent Colleges in June 2004. This report contains more data and a more complete explanation of the benchmarks. The paper can be found:

http://www.cic.edu/publications/books_reports/IT_paper.pdf

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Information Technology Operation Benchmarks – University

A “Information Technology Operation Benchmarks Report” created by Nick Ganesan, CIO/Associate Vice-Chancellor for ITTS at Fayetteville State University.  The report contains detailed benchmark data for:

1. IT Budget Profile
2. IT Budget per IT User
3. IT Budget as a Percentage of Institutional Budget
4. IT Users to IT Staff ratio
5. IT Staff to Number of PCs – Ratio
6. Staffing Profile by service area
7. PCs to IT User Ratio
8. Central IT Support Percentage
9. Staff ratio by service areas

The benchmark data is against IT services at universities located in the United States.

Location of Report: http://www.kfupm.edu.sa/sict/ictc/related%20documents/IT%20Benchmark/Fayetteville%20State%20University%20IT_Benchmarks_ver1.pdf

Local Copy: IT Benchmark for Universities – Fayetteville State University Report

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IT Staffing Model

TechRepublic has provided a spreadsheet model to help you determine the right number of people in your IT shop.  In their approach, they focus on one category of staff at a time.  In each category, a few key questions are used to focus the analysis:

1. Programmers

• Is there a separation between application development and support?
• Do programmers work on multiple business applications?
• Are external clients supported, and if so, is there customized code for individual clients?
• Are major investments needed in software development of critical business applications?
• How big is the programming backlog, and what type of changes are being requested?
• Can the key business processes be accomplished better and more economically with a third-party solution?
• If you have external clients, can programmers be dedicated to and billed to specific clients?

2. Business application analysts and trainers

• Are new applications planned?
• Does the company support the installation of software for external clients?
• How knowledgeable are the departments and clients in the use of their business applications?

3. Help Desk specialists

• Are infrastructure calls separated from business application calls, or is the Help Desk support functions for both combined?
• How responsive do you need to be?
• Does the Help Desk have sound escalation procedures?
• What’s the level of client satisfaction for IT support?
• Is the response rate to solve user issues sufficient?
• Do you have a tracking system to monitor support calls, trends, and responsiveness?
• How many calls is the Help Desk handling now?
• What is the percentage of local users (as opposed to remote)?
• Does the company require 24/7 staffing of the Help Desk?

4. Network administrators

• Are major changes or enhancements planned/needed for the infrastructure?
• Is an experienced architect of the network in place?
• What has been the history of implementing infrastructure changes?
• Is there an infrastructure strategic plan?
• Is a change management process in place?

5. Desktop support specialists

• What are the company growth plans?
• Are major changes planned/needed in the desktop hardware/software?
• What is the percentage of remote users (other office buildings, cities, etc.)?
• Is the response rate to solve desktop issues sufficient?

6. Data Center operations staff

• Does the Data Center require 24/7 operation?
• What are the requirements for the Data Center?
• Is a “lights out” operation possible?
• Is the Data Center secure?

Using this model IT staff needs are based upon a number of factors, including the workload, anticipated needs, current capability of the staff, and maturity of the company. As much as possible, we try to quantify all the variables in each set of issues. Ultimately, it’s a judgment call based on the variable data, the level of support that you need to provide, and your experience in managing IT. If you can quantify the variables that affect levels of support, you’ll be much better equipped to determine your true needs.

A full description of this approach can be found at: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1061079.html?tag=e106

A copy of the IT Staffing Model in an Excel spreadsheet can be found here:  http://downloads.techrepublic.com.com/5138-6321-730024.html

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