News
• OutSystems, the provider of the Agile Platform application development environment, announced today the results of their OutByNumbers project, which sought to verify the efficiency gains of the Agile Platform versus traditional application development and maintenance.
• Started in early 2010, the OutByNumbers team began by developing an automated method to collect relevant user data, specifically development productivity and application portfolio size.
• To measure development productivity, the project team measured the activity of developers using the Agile Platform Service Studio.  For application portfolio size, metrics were measured using unadjusted function points, following the guidelines set down by the International Function Points User Group (IFPUG).
• For baseline industry metrics, OutByNumbers used the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) database, filtered by web development projects, to develop the industry benchmarks for the project.
• The OutSystems customers that participated in the study covered a wide range of industries, from Health Care and Government to Financial Services and Technology.

Results
• The industry median number of function points per man month was 16.
• The median number of function points per man month for OutSystems users was 175.
• From these two numbers, the OutByNumbers team found that the Agile Platform proves 10.9 x more efficient than industry-standard development tools and practices.
• The OutSystems results were based on 141 applications from 15 different OutSystems customers.

Supporting Quotes
• “Internally at OutSystems, we’ve always known that the Agile Platform has a major leg up on other development environments when it comes to efficiency,” said Mike Jones, Vice President of Marketing with OutSystems.  “Thanks  to the OutByNumbers project, we now have real, actionable data, benchmarked against industry standards, showing just how efficient the Agile Platform makes development teams.  The efficiency gap between traditional development and our solution is staggering, to say the least.”
• “The OutSystems Function Point facility is well-aligned with IFPUG FP counting standards, and is highly usable as part of a benchmark metrics program,” said Frank Mazzucco, ex-President of IFPUG.  “OutSystems has a strong orientation towards metrics, and actively promotes FP-based metrics as well as other software measurement within its user community. This is highly commendable and should allow its users to measure and improve their productivity and cost-effectiveness, as well as to document their successes with OutSystems’ Agile Platform.”

Supporting Resources
OutByNumbers Project Findings Report
Assessment of OutSystems’ Function Point Analysis Whitepaper
Automated Function Point Analysis in the AgilePlatform Whitepaper
International Function Points User Group (IFPUG)
ISBSG Database