Excerpt from Guideline on Constructing Benchmarks for Adp System Acquisitions: Category, Adp Operations; Subcategory, Benchmarking for Computer Selection

Benchmarking is an accepted method for testing vendor systems during the competitive acquisition of computer systems within both private industry and the Federal Government. The success of benchmarking as an evaluation technique, however, depends upon the extent to which benchmarks can be constructed that are representative of expected, future workloads.

The immediate purpose of this Guideline is to describe a step-by-step procedure for the construction of benchmarks for use during the competitive acquisition of adp systems which support batch and/ or online workloads. This Guideline identifies the best practices found within private industry and the Federal Government with respect to benchmark construction. Detailed guidance is given when possible and where appropriate. In some areas, few established practices exist, thus treatment of these areas will be more general. The ultimate purpose of this Guideline is to help reduce the cost of the often lengthy benchmark construction process in the Federal Government, while also helping agencies construct representative benchmarks, and, indirectly, helping to reduce the vendors' time and cost of implementing the benchmark.

Interviews conducted by the National Bureau of Standards (nbs) with Federal agencies and private industry indicate a definite need for a procedural guideline on benchmark construction. It is hoped that this Guideline will enable procuring agencies to construct representative benchmarks, to the maximum possible extent, in order to minimize the risks in their evaluation of vendor-proposed adp systems.

No general guideline of this kind can address every contingency; thus, specific decisions and actions in support of the benchmark construction will vary from agency to agency. Furthermore, the extent to which this Guideline should be followed depends upon such factors as the expected dollar value of the acquisition, the availability and reliability of workload information, the availability of staff and system resources for constructing the benchmark, and the criticality of the agency mission(s) to be supported by the new system. The reader is referred to applicable Federal Procurement Regulations (fpr's) concerning the use and appropriateness of benchmarks for various dollar-value procurements.

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