^a Operational costs/purchasing obligations (goods and services purchased).
^b Cost savings compared with total costs.
^c Costs avoided compared with total costs. You can avoid costs by reusing hardware/software, utilizing a partner, etc.
^d Difference between average qualified bid and the cost of the successful bid. The sum of each calculation is aggregated into a new savings ratio for all transactions.
^e Additional capital costs—software, IT support, software, and network infrastructure.
Technical support costs—hardware and software deployment, help desk staffing, system maintenance.
Administration costs—financing, procurement, vendor management, user training, asset management.
End-user operations costs—the costs incurred from downtime and in some cases, end users supporting other end users as opposed to help desk technicians supporting them.
^f Overtime hours/regular hours worked.
^g Ratio of earned value to actual cost. EV, often called the budgeted cost of work performed, is an estimate of the value of work actually completed. It is based on the original planned costs of a project.
^h Break-even analysis. All projects have associated costs. All projects will also have associated benefits. At the outset of a project, costs will far exceed benefits. However, at some point the benefits will start outweighing the costs. This is called the break-even point. The analysis that is done to figure out when this break-even point will occur is called break-even analysis.
ⁱ SPI is the ratio of earned value to planned value and is used to determine whether or not the project is on target. (See cost performance index for a definition of earned value—EV).
^j Cost of external contractors/cost of internal resources.
^k Use real dollars if systems are external customer facing. Use internal budget dollars if these are internal customer-facing systems.
^l Return on investment. Most organizations select projects that have a positive return on investment. The return on investment, or ROI as it is most commonly known, is the additional amount earned after costs are earned back.
 The formula for ROI is

 Organizations want the ROI to be positive.

^m NPV is a method of calculating the expected monetary gain or loss by discounting all expected future cash inflows and outflows to the present point in time. If financial value is a key criterion, organizations should only consider projects with a positive NPV. This is because a positive NPV means that the return from the project exceeds the cost of capital— the return available by investing elsewhere. Higher NPVs are more desirable than lower NPVs. Formula for NPV:

• NPV = −II+ (sum of) [OCF/(1 + R(r)t] + [TCF/(1 + R(r)n]

where:

• II = initial investment
• OFC = operating cash flows in year t
• t = year
• n = life span (in years) of the project
• R(r) = project required rate of return

from http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~aahirsch/howvalueproject.html

ⁿ Use research from a company such as http://www.infotech.com/

^a Compare with competition using service such as http://www.lexisnexis.com/marketintelligence/

^a Faults of a specific severity/thousand.
^b Total number of unique defects detected.
^c Failures per period.
^d Number of days that faults spend in the system from their creation to their removal.
^e Number of requirements for which test cases have been completed/total number of functional requirements.
^f Number of requirements met/number of original requirements.
^g Number of functions in current delivery—(adds + changes + deletes)/number of functions in current delivery.
^h (implementedcapabilites/requiredcapabilities)*(capabilitiestested)/totalcapabilities)* 100%.
ⁱ Cyclomatic complexity equals the number of decisions plus one. Cyclomatic complexity, also known as V(G) or the graph theoretic number, is calculated by simply counting the number of decision statements. A high cyclomatic complexity denotes a complex procedure that's hard to understand, test, and maintain. There is a relationship between cyclomatic complexity and the "risk" in a procedure.
^j Low degree of project specification. Rate risk probability from 0% to 100%.
^k Use of bleeding edge technology. Rate risk probability from 0% to 100%.
^l Lack of development skill sets.
^m Resistance of employees or end-users to change. Rate probability of risk from 0% to 100%.
ⁿ Problems with delivering system—for example, interface difficulties. Rate risk probability from 0% to 100%.
^o Rate on a scale of 1 to 2 with 1 being unsatisfactory and 2 being satisfactory.

^a Rookie means new, inexperienced or untrained personnel.
^b Number of individuals who previously started a business.