Fred Brooks’ observation that nine women can’t make a baby in one month is perhaps the earliest and best known analogy between software development and parenting, and it’s an apt one. An effective software measurement program — like good parenting — requires careful planning, regular monitoring, and a significant long-term investment of time and energy.
In this article for Projects at Work, Doug Putnam and Taylor Putnam-Majarian present a full-circle model that organizations can apply to track actual performance against estimates, reforecast when significant changes occur, and then continually refine the process through post-mortem assessment.
In this article for Software Magazine, Doug Putnam and Taylor Putnam-Majarian demonstrate how top-down parametric estimation can be leveraged by organizations to manage capacity and demand effectively.
This article, originally published in Projects at Work, identifies three ways to maximize estimating efforts — before, during and after your project is complete.
In a recent article for Projects at Work, QSM's Don Beckett identifies seven principles, based on comprehensive studies, that leaders must support and uphold to help create an environment in which projects can succeed. Ignoring them practically guarantees failure.
Can advances in data-driven estimation turn software project failure into a distant memory? Well, if learning from experience is the key to success, imagine what you could do with real-time access to three decades of research, thousands of projects and more than 600 industry trends.
Many agile teams assume that their velocity will be constant. In this article, QSM's Andy Berner explains why that’s not the right expectation--and how that affects how you use this metric.
For an agile project to progress smoothly, the backlog must be groomed and ready for each sprint. That work must be included in your project plan. This article gives you five points to consider when planning that work.
In this article, originally published on Projects at Work, Laura Zuber explores the benefits and best practices of collaborative estimates.
How can we estimate a project in advance, while still maintaining the ability to manage the backlog in an Agile manner? In this article, Andy Berner answers that question, compares release-level estimation to the techniques used for iteration estimation, and gives some pointers on getting started with release estimation in an Agile environment.