Practical Estimating for Software Projects

Predict and control the effort, team size, schedule and cost of your software projects using proven methods

Description

Every organisation needs to estimate the effort, staffing needs, duration and costs likely to be incurred by a software project. This workshop teaches participants how to derive such information. A number of practical techniques are used.

Course Topics

• Why estimate and measure and what is needed?
  Introduces the inputs, operation and outputs of a rational estimating process. It explains the importance of understanding the quality of the information used in ensuring effective estimating.
  • What estimating is and is not (the differences between political and rational estimates)
  • The infrastructure needed for the construction of repeatable estimates
  • The benefits and costs of running a formal estimating function.
• What is to be estimated and what are the approaches?
  Discusses the attributes that make a project and may need estimation i.e. Products, Work, Money, People, Techniques, Methods and Environment. Covers how the project attributes can interact to affect estimates of effort and elapsed time. There will be an overview of estimating techniques, explaining their strengths and weaknesses, covering: top-down versus bottom-up techniques; expert opinion; analogy and tools.
• Wideband DELPHI
  A generic estimating technique that can be used f or pooling and consolidating expert opinion.
• Overview of functional size measurement
  Covers the principles behind functional size measurement - the process of sizing functional user requirements - and discusses the major methods, which can include the new COSMIC FFP method. The strengths and weaknesses of each approach are addressed. The session ends in a discussion on which approach would be appropriate within an organisation.
• Simple functional size estimating techniques
  Looks at the following techniques:
  • Ten Questions
  • Data Approach
  • Functional Approach
  • Fast Eddie.

  From functional size to effort - via 'problem size'
  Alternative approaches to quantifying the effects of technical and quality requirements and how they can be combined with the functional size to give a 'normative effort' directly or via the 'problem size'.

• Predict effort and duration
  How the Problem Size can be converted into a Project Size (effort) and the result used in the planning and scheduling process.
• Consolidating different estimates
  One of the fundamental principles of any estimating process is that a number of different views of the problem are better than one. This session covers the consolidation of these estimates resulting in an "Estimate Reasoning Document".
• Other parametric cost models
  This session gives an overview of other estimating tools, such as:
  • Regression analysis
  • COCOMO.
  • Putnam, Norden, Rayleigh technique
  • IBM Global Services' LEAD method for OO developments.

Format

Throughout the course there are discussion sessions that lead towards the production of a schedule, which should end with an organisation having a sustainable software project estimating function.