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!

The short answer is with an estimate! Early decisions are a big deal when it comes to software development and delivery. Whether its agile or waterfall, we need to figure out what the work is going to cost and how long it’s going to take, oftentimes without detailed requirements confirmed. Estimates give managers a good way to start the conversation with internal stakeholders and with clients. Should we take this project on? Is this going to cost 5 million dollars or 10? Do we have the resource capacity to fulfill the demand? Should this take 6 months or 12? Management needs to know the answers, ideally before spending major resources and before detailed planning takes place. 

By looking at thousands of completed projects, QSM has found that big money can be saved by taking a quantitative approach to finding those answers. Early data-driven estimates give us the ability to set realistic targets and manage the uncertainty that goes along with early decision making. I am referring to “Big Picture” data-driven estimates, before sprint level planning takes place.

With the SLIM-Collaborate analysis below, we can see a staffing profile that shows a gold estimate along with a more conservative green one; a two column chart showing a comparison summary; a scatterplot showing a risky effort target compared to a more reliable alternative and an industry trendline; and we see a risky gold cost estimate compared to a green high assurance one. The data shown here is saving this company from making a bad decision, a decision that could cost them a lot of money, time, and quality.

During the COVID era, I started thinking of all the home improvement projects I would like to tackle and sadly have not started any, lol.  However, I recently became motivated and decided to apply drywall mud (skim coat) to two walls in my garage that have been dinged and dented over the years.  An essential part of this process is to first estimate my materials, time and effort to minimize the impact of disruption to my family’s day to day lives.  Estimating this job is a simple process – amount of surface area to be covered yields the amount of drywall mud I will need.  The time and effort to complete the project is the fuzziest part of the estimate, but since I have mudded before, I have a rough idea of how long it will take to mud, sand, mud again, sand again, then primer and paint.  The risk of this estimate is low, since my work won’t be keeping a medical device functioning, an airplane afloat or a billing system used by thousands operational.

Estimating software delivery is not that simple and its accuracy can be easily compromised – but what is “accurate?"  Software estimation’s non-linear nature introduces much complexity, since time, effort, resources, and quality are all interdependent - when a change to one of those measures happens it affects the others.

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!

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, presented on Thursday, January 21 at 1:00 PM EST, Keith Ciocco will show how estimation and control tools can be leveraged early and while projects are in-flight.

Register here!

This year has brought many challenges. Many of us have pivoted to working remotely, trying to maintain open communication with our teams while confronting new business problems presented by COVID-19. At QSM, we've made it our goal to provide the resources our clients need during this period of uncertainty, whether it's online support, consulting, or virtual training. We've also worked to continue offering a steady stream of free resources to the online community, such as webinars, white papers, and blog posts. So as we close out 2020, we wanted to take a moment to highlight a few of our most popular. 

We'll start with one of our most widely-attended webinars to date, "Taking Software Estimation and Planning to a Higher Level." Being able to generate estimates early before detailed planning takes place is essential and can have a major impact on annual budgeting, resource allocation and cost and schedule overruns. A useful presentation if you're new to estimation or if you're a seasoned estimator, this PDU-approved webinar summarizes best practices for top-down estimation and how to leverage estimation tools. Make sure and watch until the end to catch the lively Q&A session from our audience!