On Wednesday, September 15th at 1:00 PM Eastern, QSM will host a free webinar, "Critical Cost & Schedule Target Setting with Data-Driven Estimation."

It might come as no surprise that technology organizations will spend millions of dollars this year on agile and traditional development programs. But did you know that many will lose big money and time because they don’t have an effective way to establish and negotiate reasonable cost, schedule, and quality targets? In this webinar, Keith Ciocco will demonstrate how we use the QSM estimation tools to manage these major challenges and the uncertainty that can come with very early critical planning decisions.

Register now!

QSM is deeply saddened to share that our founder, Larry Putnam, Sr. passed away last week at the age of 91, leaving behind a 40 year legacy in the software estimation and measurement field.

Larry began his illustrious career in the military, graduating from West Point in 1952. He was commissioned in the Armor Branch and went on to serve 26 years on active duty. While in the service, he studied Nuclear Effects Engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he obtained a Masters degree in Physics. 

But it was to be the relatively new field of software development where Larry would ultimately make his mark. He was assigned to manage the Army's computer program budget at the Pentagon in the mid-1970s. After struggling to defend his yearly budget to the Department of Defense (DoD) budget review authority (OSD) because he couldn't justify the staffing levels for one of his systems, he made it his mission to understand software engineering staffing and effort. Starting with the Rayleigh equation as the ideal way to apply people to a design-intensive project, he began collecting Army data to see if it followed the Rayleigh pattern.  Just from comparing the budget data to a group of about 15 systems, he was able to confirm it was a fit.  Using the simple projections of the Rayleigh curves, he was able to get the 50 systems currently in development under financial control.  (He speaks candidly of this experience in Roots Run Deep: The Journey to Software Application Estimation and Risk Management.)

If you were unable to attend our recent webinar, a replay is now available.

Software development managers are often in a position where they need to communicate to stakeholders what their work is going to cost and how long it will take to deliver. Unrealistic targets can be set, because decisions are made based on gut feel instead of past performance, causing projects to be late and over budget. Leveraging historical data with project planning can change all of that. In this webinar, Keith Ciocco demonstrates some of the best practices and tools that QSM uses to help clients capture and analyze historical data for better estimation, process improvement, and early decision making.

Watch the replay!

Software development managers are often in a position where they need to communicate to stakeholders what their work is going to cost and how long it will take to deliver. Unrealistic targets can be set, because decisions are made based on gut feel instead of past performance, causing projects to be late and over budget. Leveraging historical data with project planning can change all of that. In this webinar presented on Wednesday, July 14th at 1:00 PM EDT, Keith Ciocco will demonstrate some of the best practices and tools that QSM uses to help clients capture and analyze historical data for better estimation, process improvement, and early decision making.

Register now!

We are pleased to anounce the release of SLIM-Suite 10.3, the latest version of our flagship software management tool suite. The pandemic has put enormous pressure on business leaders to utilize resources wisely while juggling development teams in remote locations. With that in mind, our goal with the newest release was to provide several small, yet powerful improvements designed to save time and increase consistency at every step of the project and portfolio planning process.

Improvements to SLIM-Estimate's Skills Breakout configuration make it easier to fine-tune skill categories and labor rates to support better resource demand planning at both the project and portfolio levels.  Additionally, the tool's API now exposes the Sizing and PI (Productivity Index, QSM's proprietary productivity measure) calculators for users who wish to leverage these features directly from a spreadsheet or other external applications.

SLIM-DataManager, QSM's database repository tool, has new functionality designed to make it easier to validate, understand, and analyze your portfolio of projects. Power editing and enhanced keyword management allow quick changes to multiple projects right from the master project list. Power editing makes it easy to add/update descriptive “tags” used to group projects into relevant categories for benchmarking and estimate calibration.

In addition to the new configuration capabilities, SLIM-Suite 10.3 features new agile enhancements, such as an updated SLIM-Estimate agile template. SLIM-Estimate and SLIM-Control now allow users to instantly toggle the display of agile increment lines between sprints, program increments, or both levels of detail.

If you were unable to attend our recent webinar, "Cost Optimization Best Practices for Software and IT Budgeting," a replay is now available.

Managing spending and ensuring there is enough organizational capacity to fulfill client and stakeholder demands are challenges that thousands of software development and IT managers face every day. Leveraging a reliable data driven estimation and oversight process can save millions of dollars annually when carried out the right way. In this webinar, Keith Ciocco explains some of the best practices that QSM uses to help our clients improve their effectiveness when planning their project and portfolio budgets.

Watch the replay!

Managing spending and ensuring there is enough organizational capacity to fulfill client and stakeholder demands are challenges that thousands of software development and IT managers face every day. Leveraging a reliable data driven estimation and oversight process can save millions of dollars annually when carried out the right way. In this webinar presented on Wednesday, April 21 at 1:00 PM EDT, Keith Ciocco will explain some of the best practices that QSM uses to help our clients improve their effectiveness when planning their project and portfolio budgets.

Register now!

If you were unable to attend our recent webinar, "Leverage Top-Down Estimation for Better IT Planning," a replay is now available.

Technology organizations spend millions of dollars a year on IT project planning, delivery, and proposal work. Major questions around cost, duration, scope, and quality are at the forefront of the decision making process. All of this combined with the pressure of ensuring plans and proposals are realistic can make this process a challenging one.

Being able to generate early, top-down estimates while leveraging industry data and empirically-based models is essential to negotiating realistic goals and meeting customer expectations. In this webinar, Keith Ciocco will show how QSM’s SaaS solution, SLIM-Collaborate, can be leveraged early in the planning and proposal process to help meet these challenges.

Technology organizations spend millions of dollars a year on IT project planning, delivery, and proposal work. Major questions around cost, duration, scope, and quality are at the forefront of the decision making process. All of this combined with the pressure of ensuring plans and proposals are realistic can make this process a challenging one.

Being able to generate early, top-down estimates while leveraging industry data and empirically-based models is essential to negotiating realistic goals and meeting customer expectations. In this webinar presented on Tuesday, Feb. 23 at 1 PM EST, Keith Ciocco will show how QSM’s SaaS solution, SLIM-Collaborate, can be leveraged early in the planning and proposal process to help meet these challenges.

Register here!

If you were unable to attend our recent webinar on Using Metrics to Manage Runaway IT Projects, a replay is now available.

Technology organizations spend thousands of hours a month planning and delivering their software engineering, cloud, and IT transformation projects. Unfortunately many of these projects start off with unrealistic expectations around cost, duration and scope; or they start fine, but then customer requirements change. Being able to generate metrics analysis and adaptive forecasting when projects are in trouble is essential to saving money and time. All of this combined with the need to negotiate and reset expectations can make this process a challenging one. In this webinar, Keith Ciocco will show how estimation and control tools can be leveraged early and while projects are in-flight.

Watch the Replay!