QSM's recent webinar, Organizational Success; A Practical Guide to the Estimation Center of Excellence, presented by J.D. Ottenbreit, featured a lively Q&A session from our audience. Here are the highlights:
Q: You mentioned that data is critical to an Estimation Center of Excellence, what if we don’t have any good data yet?
On Thursday, Dec. 4 at 1:00 PM EST, QSM's J.D. Ottenbreit will present "Organizational Success: A Practical Guide to the Estimation Center of Excellence."
High performing companies already know that superior software estimation is not only possible, but essential to gaining and keeping a competitive edge while simultaneously helping to protect IT investments and drive positive project outcomes. One way to enable proven best practices with the estimation discipline is to formalize an Estimation Center of Excellence (ECoE). While most organizations have unique features and challenges, establishing such a center has certain foundational elements. A well-thought out launch and execution can dramatically increase transparency, collaboration and value across an enterprise or division.
In this session, J.D. Ottenbreit, QSM's Commercial Director of Professional Services, will provide an executive level webinar to cover some of the practical steps, pitfalls and critical success factors involved with bringing to life a truly successful, sustainable ECoE. The webinar is based on real-life lessons learned and case studies from QSM - a recognized industry leader and pioneer in the field of software estimation and control.
On Wednesday, Nov. 13 at 11:00 AM EST, QSM's Larry Putnam, Jr. will present IT Demand Management and Capacity Planning: Why Estimation Is Vital to Balancing the Scale, a PDU-approved webinar for ITMPI.
Estimation is critical to IT demand management as today's senior IT executives deal with a familiar challenge - how to balance the size of the development team with the company's software wish list. Modern estimation techniques offer critical insight into this challenge. In this webinar, you will learn the ins and outs of estimation and how to effectively utilize estimation to ensure project success.
Larry Putnam, Jr. has 25 years of experience using the Putnam-SLIM Methodology. He has participated in hundreds of estimation and oversight service engagements, and is responsible for product management of the SLIM-Suite of measurement tools and customer care programs. Larry has delivered numerous speeches at conferences on software estimation and measurement, and has trained - over a five-year period - more than 1,000 software professionals on industry best practice measurement, estimation and control techniques and in the use of the SLIM-Suite.
QSM's recent webinar, From Proposal to Project: Getting Resource Demand Early, presented by Andy Berner and Keith Ciocco, featured a thoughtful Q&A session from our audience. Here are the highlights:
Q: Which PPM products does SLIM work with right now?
A: We're working with customers to see what products they're interested in. It's adaptable to multiple PPM systems and we'd like your input on which ones we should deliver for you early. We can work with you so you can build a customized input to your own system. So the framework is very general and is released as part of the SLIM product. We will be providing adapters to common PPM systems and that's what we would like to learn from our design partners - which ones to deliver first. (Note: if you are a SLIM customer or prospect, you can request to join our design group by emailing Keith Ciocco).
Q: You showed SLIM-WebServices. Does that come with the desktop tool? Do you use them separately or together?
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.
QSM's recent webinar, How a Collaborative Estimation Process Produces Realistic Estimates Fast, presented by Laura Zuber, sparked a lively Q&A session from our audience. Here are the highlights:
Q: How do I know which template to use when creating a new estimate in SLIM-WebServices?
A: That’s a good question. Your back office administrator configures templates to map to your software development lifecycle, your standard processes and different project types. The back office person can provide detailed descriptions and key information that are viewable from the Feasibility Wizard so you know which one to select.
Q: What makes a project assessed as conservative or risky?
Presented by Laura Zuber.
A business stakeholder (project manager, account representative, etc.) is faced with an all-too-familiar challenge: his client requests a quote for developing a new application within a very short timeframe, and not much information about scope to go on. In this webinar, QSM's Laura Zuber shows how the business stakeholder can produce a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) estimate on the spot, using QSM's web-based solution, SLIM-WebServices. Follow his process as he collaborates with corporate estimation specialists to refine those initial estimates as they advance to more detailed stages. By incorporating contributions of a variety of project stakeholders in the estimation analysis process, the business stakeholder is able to make better business decisions.
Laura Zuber has over 22 years of experience in software development consulting and training, nine of which have been with QSM. She conducts training and demonstrations for all QSM SLIM Suite Tools and serves as a Lead QSM Support Representative. Prior to coming to QSM, Laura managed software development projects, and served as a senior software process improvement specialist at SAIC. She has performed process assessments, designed and implemented best practices, and co-lead the corporate metrics training program.
In our recent webinar, Function Point Analysis Over the Years, presented by Don Beckett, we received some great questions from our audience. Here are the highlights from the Q&A:
Q: The advice in recent years is to break large projects down into smaller ones to make them more likely to "succeed" by whatever measure. Is the advice now to make projects bigger?
A: I don't know if it's advice, but the data seemed to indicate that there is a benefit to grouping projects by larger size than the projects that are 50 or 100 function points. So I would say, where it's possible, where they can be grouped together, it would be a good idea.
Q: Why do you use the PI (Productivity Index) as opposed to the industry standard hours per function point or function points per person month?
A: Well hours per function point and function points per person month are ratios that take the ratio between effort and size and what we have found is that the schedule has a huge impact on how productive a project can be. The PI incorporates three major things: the size of the project, the amount of effort leveraged against it, and the time required to do it, so in a sense, it accounts for schedule, which function points per person month does not do. So that's why we use it.
Q: How do we convert a project from SLOC to function points to find the PI for a specific project?
We are pleased to announce our upcoming webinar, Function Point Analysis Over the Years, presented by Don Beckett on Thursday, Dec. 5 at 1:00 PM EST.
Function point analysis has played an important role in software measurement and analysis for 30 years. What can we learn from trends spanning this substantial time period? What does the "average software project" look like? Has productivity increased or decreased? What are the impacts of different staffing strategies? In this webinar, QSM's Don Beckett leverages more than 2,200 validated projects counted in function points and completed since the year 2000 from the QSM historical database to answer these questions. It is easy to have opinions about any of these questions. QSM is fortunate to be able to evaluate them empirically. Please join us for a metrics-based analysis of these questions and more.
Don Beckett has 18 years of experience in software project estimation, measurement, and analysis. His responsibilities at QSM include research, consulting, and customer support. Don was an analyst/co-author of the 2006 QSM Software Almanac and has contributed articles to Crosstalk and Software Tech News.
If you were unable to attend our recent webinar, Bringing Estimation and Business Intelligence to the Enterprise, a replay is now available.
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.