September 2013

September 2013

Webinar - Bringing Estimation and Business Intelligence to the Enterprise

Watch the webinar replay for Bringing Estimation and Business Intelligence to the Enterprise, presented by Keith Ciocco.

Successful software development estimates depend upon more than just inputs, especially at the enterprise level. They require collaboration between stakeholders, consistency in estimation methods, and historical basis. It's also essential to account for uncertainty and risk. In this webinar, Keith Ciocco demonstrates how SLIM-Estimate and SLIM-WebServices work together to bring reliable business intelligence to the enterprise, while leveraging historical data to increase estimation accuracy and credibility.

As Vice President of QSM, Keith has more than 25 years of experience working in sales and customer service, with 17 of those years spent at QSM. Keith's primary responsibilities include managing business development, existing client relations, customer retention and response.

Watch the replay!

Blog Post Categories 
Webinars Estimation

Webinar - A Practical Approach to Measuring Software Development Productivity

On Oct. 2, 11:00 AM EST, QSM's Phil Armour will present "A Practical Approach to Measuring Software Development Productivity" as part of the ITMPI Webinar Series. 

Most measurements in software development are notoriously difficult and assessing productivity is no exception. There are an enormous number of factors that could or do affect productivity, and it is challenging to identify and characterize what they might be. The effort involved often deters organizations from even attempting to quantify how effective they are at building systems. This webinar will present a useful and practical approach to productivity measurement based on a mathematical model of systems development and over thirty years of research. It will also describe the core mathematical functions that relate to the major attributes of systems development, show how a useful productivity metric can be calculated from project history, and demonstrate how QSM’s database of over 10,000 projects support this view of software development productivity.

Register now!

Blog Post Categories 
Webinars Productivity

New Article - All In: Collaborative Software Estimates

Collaborative Software EstimationSoftware projects often commit to unrealistic schedule and budget expectations due to little or no information about the size and scope or productivity. Yet the business reality is that projects must be estimated early in the life cycle to support business goals and strategic planning. These challenges can be overcome with a transparent and collaborative estimation process. It depends on metrics collection, analysis, risk comparison, and a structure for sharing the right information with the right people at the right time.

In an article recently published on Projects at Work, Laura Zuber explores the benefits of collaborative software project estimates and identifies best practices for implementing them.

Read the full article!

Blog Post Categories 
Estimation Articles

How to Use Big Data to Improve Your Software Projects

In the recent Washington Post article How the Obama Campaign Won the Race for Voter Data, Joel Kowsky writes about how the 2012 Obama campaign used analytics to improve their campaign strategy, and to ultimately secure the presidential victory.  

Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, it’s hard to argue that Barack Obama’s campaign strategy was anything short of impressive.  As soon as Obama took office in 2009, his team began preparing for his 2012 campaign.  From the start there was a strong emphasis on measuring the campaign’s progress.  Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, stated 

“There’s always been two campaigns since the Internet was invented, the campaign online and the campaign on the doors.  What I wanted was, I didn’t care where you organized, what time you organized, how you organized, as long as I could track it, I can measure it, and I can encourage you to do more of it.”

The team began by conducting a postmortem study on their 2008 campaign where they analyzed the number of homes visited, phone calls placed, and voters registered by each field organizer and volunteer.  The result was a 500 page report which highlighted areas of improvement for the 2012 campaign.  

The suggestions led the Obama campaign to invest in building customized software that would integrate all the data the campaign had collected on voters, donors, and volunteers and link to individual voter profile.  This software analyzed previously collected data to calculate the likelihood of candidate support, the likelihood of election day turnout, and the degree of persuasion for each voter.