QSM Announces the Commercial Availability of SLIM-MasterPlan®

April 30, 1999 -- McLean, VA

Development Team

Lauren Thayer

• Ann Fitzsimmons
• Dennis Palazzo
• Scott Lancaster

The first software tool designed to aggregate multiple project plans and releases was announced today by QSM Inc., a leading supplier of software lifecycle products and services. SLIM-MasterPlan™ is the latest addition to QSM's renowned Software Lifecycle Management (SLIM ®) product line.

The interactive product provides a visualization capability that projects how changing resources or requirements might impact schedule, defects, or costs. By graphically depicting a project's resource variables such as staff or system size, deadlines, and quality parameters, SLIM-MasterPlan allows users to simplify the most sophisticated plans and communicate that information for management.

Dick Heiman, an Application Development Tools analyst at International Data Corporation said, "The arrival of tools to aggregate software project metrics signals a maturation of the software management process. Metrics tools have existed for years, but tools like SLIM-MasterPlan that provide an integrated project view have not. This integrated view will help CIOs and software executives understand where their resources are being expended and how to re-direct them when necessary."

William Elliott, Engineering Manager in the Transportation Software Systems Department of Harris Corp. and a beta user for the product, said, "We have been using an early-release version of SLIM-MasterPlan regularly since December, and have found it to be a valuable addition to the SLIM estimating tool set. It allows us to fill in the 'big picture' for our multi-release projects."
The product can also be used for multi-year planning, to estimate individual subsystems and then add them together, along with systems integration and testing efforts. This process enables users to obtain a meaningful assessment of plans for both internally developed and outsourced systems.

QSM Vice President Doug Putnam said, "Most organizations develop using a multiple-release timebox development approach, meaning they can only manage what can be developed by a single team within a specific amount of time. As the experience at Harris Corp. shows, SLIM-MasterPlan allows estimators to aggregate any number of product releases into a comprehensive program plan. This is a unique capability in the market today, and allows users to estimate and build their plans the way they will be executed in real life."

The SLIM software management suite steps up to an unprecedented level of sophistication with MasterPlan. The multiple project capability is a dramatic enhancement to the SLIM suite, which is used in three aspects of software development:

• estimating before a project has started, so managers can assign resources realistically;
• analyzing midstream progress and providing realtime, adaptive forecasting to accurately predict completion; and
• benchmarking developers' proficiency against industry statistics.

The project estimation capability has been especially useful in assessing the reality of bids for outsourced development at several QSM client organizations.

Aside from the important static views that can portray a situation as it exists, SLIM also enables users to simulate the impact of schedule compression, changing requirements, or additional resources. QSM's Putnam noted, "It's become a truism that, just as nine women cannot produce a baby in one month, adding staff to a software project can actually have a counterintuitive impact of lengthening the schedule. SLIM's simulations prove this, time and time again, and this capability is a convincing argument when management is tempted to add resources whenever projects fall behind."

SLIM-MasterPlan will be used by release managers, strategic planners, and project managers, all of whom rely on accurate measurement and predictions in order to deliver meaningful information to CIOs and business executives.

Product or release managers need to juggle fixed teams of resources on multiple releases of a single product line, for example. Yet until the arrival of SLIM-MasterPlan, there was no automated way to view this information in a meaningful way. Likewise, strategic planners who are planning multiple products or multiple releases can get a better idea of where resources need to be applied, when projects will actually be completed, and what the quality level is likely to be.

The SLIM suite operates in standard corporate computing environments, most typically a Pentium computer running any version of Windows. A license for SLIM-MasterPlan costs $4,000 annually for unlimited usage; the product is initially being provided automatically to current licensees of SLIM, and will be generally available in April.

For Further Information Contact:

Keith Ciocco
Product Sales Manager
Quantitative Software Management, Inc.
2000 Corporate Ridge, Suite 900
McLean, VA 22102
Tel: (800) 424-6755
FAX: (703) 749-3795
e-mail: info@qsm.com
URL: http://www.qsm.com