August 2013

August 2013

Customizing SLIM Suite Workbooks

Although each workbook is set up with default themes, the look and feel of SLIM-Estimate, SLIM-Control, SLIM-Metrics, and SLIM-MasterPlan workbooks are readily customizable.  

Default workbook settings

Screen Background

The easiest way to change the feel of your workbooks is to change the background color and style.  To change the background color, go to Tools|Customize Display|Screen/Printer Fonts, Colors, and Symbols…, then go to the Colors & Symbols tab on the right.

Screen/Printer Fonts, Colors, and Symbols

Color Start and Color End are important if you want to create a gradient background, like the background in the first image.  A gradient background begins with your specified Color Start color then transforms into your Color Stop color either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally (pictured above).  If you choose the Solid color style, simply select your Color Start.

Graph Background

Like the Screen Background, you can have a solid background or a gradient.  Simply follow the steps above for selecting your colors and styles.

Solutions and Reference Data

New White Paper: An Analysis of Function Point Trends

Function point analysis has played an important role in software measurement and analysis for 30 years, but what will be the role of function points in the future? Will they have staying power? Expanding off of a recent article for IFPUG's Metrics Views, Don Beckett looks at the QSM software project database and examines a set of validated projects counted in function points that have completed since the year 2000 to see what they tell about productivity, schedule, and staffing. We are fortunate to have several thousand projects in this sample to work with as this allows us to parse the data many different ways and still have enough projects to be statistically significant. For this study only unadjusted function points were used.

Read the full white paper!

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Articles Function Points White Paper

Smaller Project Teams Are More Productive

It's no secret we're advocates of smaller teams, but it's always nice when others agree. Baseline's Tony Kontzer leveraged some of our most recent data for an informative slideshow about team size.

At one time or another, almost all information technology professionals have heard cries for more resources. They may even have been the one asking for help. "If only there were more people available for this project," they've said, "then maybe it would get done on time." Well, it turns out that more staffing is not the equivalent of optimal staffing. In fact, smaller project teams are more productive and can complete projects cheaper and faster than larger ones, according to a recent study from software life cycle consultancy Quantitative Software Management. That should be good news for IT departments that have seen their ranks depleted in recent years.

To see more results from QSM's recent study, read Don Beckett's post on the correlation between staffing and schedule.

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Team Size QSM News

Staff That Project!

I should be the last one to complain about overstaffed projects; I may owe my career to one.  My first job in information technology (IT) was with a mortgage company that was a textbook example of bad practices.  Annual personnel turnover was 90% and after six months on the job, I was the person on the IT staff with the most seniority.  After a year, I knew it was time to go.  I applied for a job with a large systems integrator that was hiring furiously.  I was drug free, did not have a criminal record, and knew COBOL, so I was a perfect match.  The project to which I was assigned had planned to ramp up to a peak staff of 25 and last about 8 months.  I was team member number 60 of the 80 it eventually grew into by the time it completed (in 18 months).  I stayed with that company for a number of years and have no complaints about the wide range of experiences that I had and skills I gained. 

What is the best way to determine how much staff a software project should have?  QSM has conducted a productivity study on projects sized in Function Points that suggests a way.  A large sample of projects (over 2,000) was split into size bins.  Within each bin the projects were divided into quartiles based on their staffing. The average and median productivity (Function Points per Person Month) were determined for each quartile.  The following table compares productivity and staffing levels for the smallest and largest staffing quartiles.

Productivity Rates

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Team Size

QSM Expands into Asia Pacific Market with RedBay Consulting Partnership

Having seen incredible growth in our business domestically and in Europe, QSM continues its interational expansion by partnering with RedBay Consulting. RedBay will provide SLIM tool licensing and consulting services, as well as local customer support in the Australia, Asia, and Pacific regions. 

RedBay Consulting is a major provider of Schedule Compliance Risk Assessment Methodology (SCRAM) assessments, which use SLIM as an important component of a schedule compliance review. They help organizations to be more effective in the delivery of their software products and services. Services include consultancy, training and assessment of organizational processes for the acquisition, development and support of software intensive systems. When working on behalf of QSM, RedBay Consulting will conduct business as Quantitative Software Management-Asia/Pacific. 

Read more about this exciting partnership!

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QSM News

New Article: Is It Bigger Than a Breadbox? Getting Started with Release Estimation

It’s becoming clear to organizations adopting Agile methods that one still needs to estimate how long a project or a release of a product will take. It won’t suffice for businesses to simply take guesses or accept unreasonable constraints. We must be able to derive credible estimates, based on a history of similar projects. How can we estimate a project in advance while still maintaining the ability to manage the backlog in an agile manner?

In this article, recently published on Projectmanagement.com, QSM's Andy Berner answers that question, compares release-level estimation to the techniques used for iteration estimation, and gives some pointers on getting started with release estimation in an agile environment.

Andy Berner is a software engineer and methodologist. He came to QSM in 2012 after over 25 years in both large and small software organizations, including, among others, EDS (now HP), Rational Software and IBM. Based on his experience in almost every role in software development, Andy has consulted with numerous organizations on using software development methods and tools to improve productivity and quality.

Read the full article here!

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Estimation Agile Articles