Nesma considers the availability of historical data of software projects and maintenance of an utmost importance for the industry. Nesma is therefore a proud member of the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG). This not-for-profit organization collects industry project data (new developments and maintenance & support) in order to help the industry to advance by making better decisions based on data.

Once a year, ISBSG organizes a workshop where the members are invited to discuss and influence the strategy, the products, the data collection processes and other issues. Since 2013, the workshop is connected with a 1-day conference called ‘IT Confidence’. This conference focuses on ways to use historical data for project estimating, project control. This year the Italian Gufpi-ISMA (Italian function points user group) organization is going to host the IT Confidence and ISBSG workshop in Florence. The IT confidence benchmarking and performance measurement conference is scheduled on Monday October 19 and the program is published at: https://itconfidence2015.wordpress.com/program/

The presentations of the previous IT Confidence conferences are available through the Slideshare account of ISBSG: http://www.slideshare.net/ISBSG

On behalf of Nesma, board member Harold van Heeringen is going to chair the ISBSG workshop in his role as the current ISBSG president. For Nesma this is a great achievement and it shows again the way Nesma is influencing the way the software metrics industry is shaping. The fact that it will be possible to take the Nesma/Cito certification exam in Florence stresses this even further.

For more information about ISBSG, check www.isbsg.org or contact the Nesma working group Benchmarking (wgBenchmarking@nesma.org).