Having seen incredible growth in our business domestically and in Europe, QSM continues its interational expansion by partnering with RedBay Consulting. RedBay will provide SLIM tool licensing and consulting services, as well as local customer support in the Australia, Asia, and Pacific regions. 

RedBay Consulting is a major provider of Schedule Compliance Risk Assessment Methodology (SCRAM) assessments, which use SLIM as an important component of a schedule compliance review. They help organizations to be more effective in the delivery of their software products and services. Services include consultancy, training and assessment of organizational processes for the acquisition, development and support of software intensive systems. When working on behalf of QSM, RedBay Consulting will conduct business as Quantitative Software Management-Asia/Pacific. 

Read more about this exciting partnership!

Version 5.0 of the QSM's Function Point Gearing Factor table is live!

The Function Point Gearing Factor table provides average, median, minimum, and maximum gearing factors for recently completed function point projects. A gearing factor is the average number of basic work units in your chosen function unit. Originally, it was designed to be used as a common reference point for comparing different sizing metrics by mapping them to the smallest sizing unit common to all software projects. QSM recommends that organizations collect both code counts and final function point counts for completed software projects and use this data for estimates. Where there is no completed project data available for estimation, we provide customers with a starting point to help them choose an appropriate gearing factor for their chosen programming language.

For this version of the table, we looked at 2192 recently completed function point projects out of the 10,000+ in QSM's historical database. The sample included 126 different languages, 37 of which had enough data to be included in the table. Interestingly, this year we added three new languages: Brio, Cognos Impromptu Scripts, and Cross Systems Products (CSP).

One trend we noticed is that, in general, the range for gearing factors has decreased over time. Similarly, the average and median values have decreased, which we attribute to having more data to work with.

Read the full press release or visit the new table!

We are pleased to announce QSM's partnership with Digital Celerity LLC, a leader in Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) and IT Service Management expert services and solutions, for CA World 2013. 

At the event, representatives from both QSM and Digital Celerity will showcase how QSM's SLIM Suite of Tools feeds project estimation data into the CA Clarity^TM PPM tool to allow for improved planning and resource allocation. Out of the top 10 systems integrators in the world, seven rely on SLIM intelligence. By engaging in this type of top-down estimating, analytics for project planning can be fed into PPM tools such as CA Clarity^TM PPM. Resulting analytics include detailed plans for effort by labor category, time period and project size. Leveraging SLIM tools with CA Clarity^TM PPM pushes project risk identification to the earlier proposal and feasibility stages in the project lifecycle, which can significantly reduce the risk of project failure. 

The conference, which takes place April 21-24, 2013 in Las Vegas, NV, will showcase the latest and most innovative technologies for delivering optimal business results. Stop by QSM booth #115 to learn more about how SLIM enhances PPM tools.

For more details about this partnership, read the full press release.

QSM's best in class consulting team continues to grow with talented and dedicated individuals. We are pleased to welcome Abyi Yeshigeta as a Project Consultant supporting the Department of State Consular Affairs (CA) Consular Systems Technology (CST) engagement team on-site in Washington, DC. Abyi holds a BBA in Business Management from James Madison University and is a PMI certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with DoD Defense Acquisition University training (DAU 101). Abyi brings five years of management consulting experience to include program and project management support, test and evaluation, and independent reviews/audits.

Experienced consultants like Abyi allow us to understand your business challenges quickly and identify effective solutions. Learn more about QSM consulting services today!

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.

QSM is pleased to welcome J. D. Ottenbreit and James Heires, two recognized industry experts, to our growing professional services team.

An accomplished business leader with 15+ years of technical and functional experience that spans the commercial, government and academic sectors, J. D. Ottenbreit specializes in client and large account management, project/program oversight and control, the full software development lifecycle, quality assurance, business process redesign, as well as strategic planning and execution. He has led teams both domestically and internationally as part of a former Big Four corporation, a Fortune 50 company, and as an advisor to various cabinet level government agencies and departments.   

Jeff will lead the QSM commercial consulting line of business where he and his team leverage our SLIM Suite of Tools and deep business insights to provide software modeling, project stewardship and best practice, metric and benchmark studies for application development and IT decision makers. 

Jeff is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and trained in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) methodology and Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) model. He holds a MBA in Management Information Systems from Sacred Heart University, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Saskatchewan, and is a graduate of the Yale School of Management Strategic Leadership Workshop. 

Please welcome Carol Dekkers who joins QSM as a part-time Consultant and Trainer. Carol will be a member of our consulting team and also assisting as needed with our research and training needs. Carol has been a longtime teaming partner of QSM and those of us who have worked with her know that she is an excellent speaker, writer, trainer and consultant.  

Carol is a recognized international expert in the software metrics and IT Project Management industries. A former President of the International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG), Carol has been project editor of the U.S. delegation to ISO software and systems engineering standards in function points and benchmarking (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7) since 1994. 

QSM is pleased to welcome Andy Berner to our development team as a Senior Software Engineer. He will be supporting the product development team on new SLIM software estimation, forecasting, and benchmarking products as well as the IBM Rational integrations. As an IBM Rational Partner, QSM has had the privilege of working with Andy over the last several years designing and implementing integrations between the SLIM Tool Suite and the IBM Rational applications Rational Team Concert, Rational Focal Point, and Rational Method Composer.  

Andy Berner joins our team with experience in a wide variety of areas in software development. Andy came from IBM where he was lead architect for enablement and strategy in the Ready for IBM Rational program. Andy has done extensive consulting on software development methods and tools, recently focusing on integrations of tools and team members throughout the software lifecycle. Prior to IBM, Andy spent 11 years at EDS. In a former life, Andy was a research mathematician and teacher, and is now looking forward to helping QSM customers improve their ability to manage and control their projects.