Last Thursday, I hosted a webinar introducing our new, cloud-based estimation tool, SLIM-WebServices (watch the replay here). The Q&A portion of the presentation, which was fielded by both Larry Putnam, Jr. and myself, featured some great questions from the audience about the new tool's capabilities. Here are the highlights:

How will this work with the desktop version? Do they work together or separately?

Either way. The web version comes with enough information to work as a standalone. If you want more configuration capability, then you’ll want to have the desktop products and you can have a power user creating templates for the web version.

How do I use SLIM-WebServices if I don’t have the desktop tools?

You can have QSM create the templates for you on a consulting basis if you don’t have the desktop tools. SLIM-WebServices also includes standard templates representing multiple lifecycles that you can download very easily. However, any customization would need to be done with the desktop tools or with QSM Consulting.

Can we have a company-specific estimation database so that users can select from previous estimates?

A recent series of posts by Karl Wiegers eloquently discusses the "reality of tradeoffs" software professionals deal with every day, going beyond the typical success drivers (time, cost, and quality) to include product features and staff. He shares inspiring practical information by making distinctions between constraints, drivers, and degrees of freedom, each representing the amount of flexibility the project manager has to adjust a key factor.

SLIM-Estimate has modeled the non-linear interdependencies of these metrics for over thirty years. It accounts for Wiegers’s five project success factors explicitly, showing the tradeoffs between them in real time. I have mapped Wiegers’s Five Dimensions to SLIM-Estimate’s parameters to show how you can use SLIM-Estimate quantify the trade-offs Wiegers describes.

In response to my previous post, I made a new word cloud for the top 25 programming languages in the QSM historical database from 2008 to present.

One striking difference between this word cloud and the last week's is that the font sizes are much smaller, due to the smaller sample size. Since word clouds use font size to represent size within a sample, this is expected since the entire QSM database is larger than the sample from 2008 to present. 

Unlike last week's cloud, Java is the predominant programming language since 2008. Java represents 26% of the sample since 2008 while COBOL, the #1 programming language in the entire database, holds only 11% of this sample. According to Langpop.com, a site which ranks the popularity of programming languages using search results, Java ranks second in the Normalized Comparison chart, just below C.  

In Programming Language Trends: An Empirical Study, a paper from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the authors attempt to predict the popularity of programming languages by using regression analysis which focuses on intrinsic and extrinsic factors.  

On Thursday, Nov. 8 at 1:00 PM EST, I will present SLIM-WebServices: Project Estimation Goes Global - a webinar showcasing our new, web-based estimation and measurement tool. I'm looking forward to demonstrating how this powerful, yet easy-to-use tool can be leveraged by both non-technical users and estimation experts alike to share project estimation intelligence across the entire enterprise.

For too long, project estimation intelligence has been confined to a niche group, making it difficult for business stakeholders and decision makers to get critical project planning information when they need it. Introducing SLIM-WebServices from QSM - the lighter, leaner, liberated way to share the power of SLIM with an entire enterprise. With this new cloud-based tool, we are empowering more people in more positions at more places in an enterprise - improving visibility, transparency and informed decision making. Ultimately, this is an organization's best defense against cost overruns, schedule slippages, and failed implementations. Presented by QSM Marketing Manager, Elisabeth Pendergrass, this webinar gives an overview and live demonstration of SLIM-WebServices. 

As Marketing Manager at QSM, Elisabeth Pendergrass has over 7 years of experience working in software and technology marketing. Her responsibilities at QSM include website and search engine marketing, organizing in-house and joint webinars, social media, creating marketing materials for new product offerings, and managing PR efforts. 

Register now for this webinar!

Here is a helpful tip for comparing project performance for projects of different sizes.

Software size has a big impact on metrics like effort, duration, defects, or productivity. We have known for many years that the relationship between project size and most software metrics is exponential. That is why our trends appear straight on a log – log scale.  SLIM Suite tools take project size into account by regressing core software metrics like effort, duration, or productivity against size to sanity-check estimates and benchmark completed projects:

The charts above show both the average trend and +/- 1, 2, and 3 standard deviation trend lines.  As a rule of thumb, a normal distribution (or one that has been normalized by transformation such as our log scale) will typically contain 68% of the data between +/- 1 standard deviation of the mean, 95% within +/- 2 standard deviations, and 99.7% within +/- 3 standard deviations.

Information about the standard deviation can be useful when analyzing software metrics, and it is quite easy to produce in SLIM-Metrics. Starting with a database of SLIM-DataManager projects, you can get a table of the standard deviations using SLIM-Metrics’ five star reports.

Here is a five star report for a set of Command & Control (C&C) software projects.

Since I began working with SLIM-Metrics and the QSM historical database, I've been interested in unique ways to present information.  I've written before about how others pair data and design to visualize patterns, but this is my first attempt: a word cloud.  

A word cloud is a graphical representation of how often a word is used within a sample.  The larger the font in the word cloud, the more often it is used in the sample.  Word clouds are a great tool for displaying sensitive data without having to use numbers.  The above word cloud visualizes the entire QSM database, going back three decades.

What I like about this visualization is that at a glance, you can tell that more projects use PL/1 than Natural, simply by examining font size.  Even without knowing exactly how many Java projects are in the QSM database, you can still determine that it's more than Visual Basic, but less than COBOL. 

Unsurprisingly, COBOL still has a large market share in the QSM database.  Most COBOL projects completed after 2000 were maintenance projects, not new development. 

What would you do if you knew from the beginning that the project you were working on was doomed to fail? Would you ask for an extended deadline? More people? Or would you agree to the project manager’s needs knowing in advance that the agreed upon criteria could not be met? Unfortunately, this is a situation that faces nearly 70% of software developers, reports Adrian Bridgwater in an article for Computer Weekly. Luckily for software developers and project managers alike, the launch of QSM’s cloud-based product, SLIM-WebServices, can help your organization prevent project failure.

Through the use of QSM’s advanced algorithmic analyses and extensive project database, SLIM has assisted seven of the top 10 systems integrators in the world with their estimation and benchmarking needs. “Project intelligence is infinitely more valuable when shared,” explains Larry Putnam, Jr., co-CEO for QSM. SLIM-WebServices’ cloud-based format makes it easier than ever to share project intelligence. Users can create and share estimates anywhere there is an internet connection. Putnam concludes by stating, “With SLIM-WebServices, we’re empowering more people in more positions at more places in an enterprise – improving visibility, transparency and informed decision-making. Ultimately, this is a company’s best defense against cost overruns, schedule slippages, and failed implementations.”  

Learn more about SLIM-WebServices!

QSM is pleased to welcome Taylor Putnam to the QSM Research and Technical Support team. Taylor joins QSM with a strong research background. Throughout college and her time interning for QSM, she has conducted studies on risk perception, complex decision making, behavioral economics, and project sizing. Taylor graduated cum laude from Dickinson College with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Spanish.

Taylor will be assisting in peer reviews for product documentation, new product testing, research to support consulting engagements, validating new projects for the QSM Database.

SLIM-WebServices is here! We are pleased to introduce the newest generation of SLIM tools: a "light and lean," cloud-based version of our world-class project estimating, tracking, and benchmarking products. With a streamlined structure and simplified user interface, SLIM-WebServices endows more people in more positions at more places in an enterprise with sophisticated project estimation intelligence – improving visibility, transparency, and global collaboration.

Whether you’re conducting a feasibility assessment, estimating a new project, tracking ongoing projects, building a historical database, or benchmarking your completed projects, SLIM-WebServices support better decision making at each stage of the software lifecycle. This powerful, yet easy-to-use tool delivers fast results using minimal inputs, allowing estimators, project managers, stakeholders, and senior management to quickly and easily share information and lessons learned. SLIM-WebServices mirror the software development lifecycle, and encourage the adoption of enterprise-wide standards for project estimation, tracking, and benchmarking.

Read the full news release.

At QSM we offer Estimation Process Consulting Services and the SLIM-Estimate tool. In my 16 years at QSM, I have probably spoken with hundreds of project managers about the pain that they have in the estimation area. Many tell me that they want to finish implementing their process before they bring in a tool.

One of the things that I have learned over the years is that it can be extremely beneficial to bring in the tool while the process is being developed. A successful estimation process implementation is about getting the right project data in the right place for consistent collaboration and results. Implement both the process and the tool at the same time and you can save a ton of money in rework costs down the road. 

A good estimation tool provides a roadmap and a communication vehicle for a successful estimation process. The tool collects the core metrics that the process requires. It also streamlines the results to give the user exactly what they need to know: risk, size, duration, effort, reliability, and productivity.

Some will spend years writing and implementing their process. Why not get the estimation tool in place sooner to make things easier?