For example, we need to know the attributes/characteristics/factors to measure the quality of the agile development approach during the development process.
That’s not easy. First of all, you have to define the attributes you are interested in, e.g., process-related attributes, user-centered attributes, and product-related attributes.
In literature, you can find a number of such attributes documented in a variety of case studies. You may have a look at the proceedings, e.g., from the ICSSP, Profes, XP, SEAA, and EuroSPI conferences. Here, you can find numerous reports and case studies.
Important is, again, that you precisely define the attributes that you are interested in. Second step is the definition of a strategy to gather the data. This strategy then depends on the data you are interested in. For example, if you are interested in the quality attributes of the resulting product, you should consider establishing some kind of automatic data collection, e.g., changes, bugs, feature requests, and so forth from a ticket system. Some standard values are for instance:
- remaining work
- open features
- velocity
- time to fix bugs
- and many, many more
If you are interested into the users’ perception of the process, usually, you have to conduct survey-based research. You may create a questionnaire in which you can ask for, e.g.:
- appropriateness of the process
- completeness and consistency
- adequacy
- way of use
- accessibility
- and many, many more
Finally, if you are interested in the model as such, you first have to determine whether the model is a “real” model (e.g., realized using the Eclipse Process Framework). If this is the case, you can also apply metrics to evaluate the model, e.g.:
- completeness and consistency
- validity
- complexity of the model
In summary, there is much that can be measured. A good point to start with is maybe the book “Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering” (there is an online version available). If you are looking for some smaller bits of information to start with, have a look on our paper on process modeling experimentation, which covers process engineering and process user perspectives (process-centered):
A simple test to rate the quality of a software team (which I think can be seen as a measure of the quality of the develpoment process) is the "Joel Test" (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html). This test is used e.g. by http://careers.stackoverflow.com/