September 2014

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September 2014

Is Better Software Productivity Always the Right Goal?

September 24th, 2014 by Donald Beckett

Some years ago, the large systems integrator I worked for brought in a new CEO in an attempt to jump start the company.  We had lost our position as number one in the industry and leadership had become stagnant and ingrown.  The new CEO, who did not have a software background, liked to promise that we could deliver our projects “Faster, Better, and Cheaper."  That sounds wonderful, but is rapid process improvement in three dimensions really possible?  The short answer is “No” – at least not in the short term.  Here’s why.

To deliver a software project faster one of two things has to occur:  

  • Productivity must increase or
  • More effort (cost) must be applied to the project.  

Increasing productivity is a long term strategy that entails improving how the organization works.  It has nothing to do with mandating unpaid overtime or telling developers to “work smarter.”  In fact, those strategies are usually counterproductive.  

Blog Post Categories 
Productivity

Webinar - From Proposal to Project: Getting Resource Demand Early

September 18th, 2014 by Elisabeth Pendergrass

A replay is available for this webinar, From Proposal to Project: Getting Resource Demand Early, presented by Andy Berner and Keith Ciocco.

When evaluating proposals, any good project manager knows it doesn't do any good to charter a project if the right people aren't available or if the cost and schedule are unrealistic. It becomes very important early on in the proposal process to be able to run accurate feasibility estimates that produce skilled staff outputs, matching resources needed for a project to the resources you have. This webinar, presented by QSM's Andy Berner and Keith Ciocco, demonstrates a powerful top-down approach, which allows organizations to do early resource planning and powerful what-if analysis without breaking out the work breakdown structure (WBS). This process matches the supply to the demand and is easy, credible, and correct.

Dr. Andy Berner has helped organizations improve their software development processes for over 20 years. He has "hands-on" experience with almost every role in software development. He is on the QSM software development team and is leading the work at QSM to incorporate Agile techniques into and enhance the resource demand management capabilities of the SLIM-Suite. He has recently published several articles on Agile methods and practices, focusing on planning projects to set realistic expectations. He has spoken at numerous conferences on software tools and methods, often with an emphasis on how to make sure that tools serve the team, rather than the other way around. He has an A.B. cum Laude in Mathematics from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has seven US Patents.

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Webinars Demand Management Capacity Planning

The Best of Both Worlds: Leveraging Top-Down Estimation with Capacity Planning

September 10th, 2014 by Keith Ciocco

Demand Management and Capacity PlanningSince I work for a software metrics and estimation company, many people ask me questions regarding capacity planning and demand management. Most of the project managers that I speak with are using project portfolio management tools for very detailed, task-level resource capacity planning. They spend a lot of time planning the person hours for each task and then these task-level plans are prioritized and viewed across the organization. These are useful tools and methods and they usually require a sizable investment.

The problem is that many of these project managers don’t have a good way to support demand management. That is to say that they aren’t able to accurately estimate the key drivers that go into their PPM tools.  They need to be able to answer key questions like: Should we commit to 6 months or 9 for the project duration? Do we need 10 software developers or 20 to finish in 9 months? How much is the overall project going to cost? What alternatives do we have? Has anyone ever achieved that duration in the past? Should we even go forward with this project; what is the risk?

Oftentimes the project manager comes up with this information informally based on experience. Unfortunately, when they don’t use a scientific approach to estimating, they leave out key factors that affect the estimate and project success, like project complexity, team efficiency, and overall project uncertainty.

Blog Post Categories 
Estimation Demand Management Capacity Planning PPM