“You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.”

At this point, we’re about one month into 2013 and many of us have abandoned our New Year’s resolutions.  Personally, I prefer to set my yearly goals about a month in because it gives me some time to reflect on what I really want to improve without being distracted by everyone’s bandwagon resolutions like getting in shape or eating less junk food.

The other reason I prefer to wait a month before resolving to do anything is because it gives me time to collect some baseline data.  In his Wall Street Journal article, Bill Gates writes, that “you can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal.”

To use the common example of getting in shape, I’m going to explain:

1. How to set a goal, and
2. How to measure it so that you can effectively achieve your goal.

First you need to set a baseline measure of what your abilities are.  How fast and far can you run?  How much weight can you lift?  How much do you weigh?  Knowing the answers to these questions can help you determine what needs improvement.  

Next you need to identify your end goal and find a way to quantify progress towards that goal.  What does “get in shape” actually mean?  Do I want to be able to run faster?  Farther?  Do I want to be able to lift more weight?  Do I want to weigh less?  All of these goals can be quantified (e.g. I want to be able to run a mile 30 seconds faster than I currently do, I want to run a 10 miler, I want to be able to bench press 100 pounds, I want to lose 20 pounds).

While doing research on projects counted in function points, the sample size was large enough (over 2000 projects) to allow me to compare the productivity of different project types.  The QSM database uses these project categories:

• New Development (> 75% new functionality)
• Major Enhancement (25% - 75% new functionality)
• Minor Enhancement (5% - 25% new functionality)
• Conversion (< 5% new functionality)
• Maintenance

I calculated the normalized PI’s for projects in each development classification compared to the QSM Business trend lines.  The advantage of this is that it takes into consideration the impact of size and shows how the productivity of each project “application type” differs from the QSM Business IT average.  The datasets included medium and high confidence IT projects completed since 2000.  When I obtained the results, I went back over my selection process and calculations to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake.  The numbers were that surprising.  But, no, I hadn’t fat fingered anything (neither physically nor mentally).  Average productivity for conversion projects  was more than a standard deviation below the QSM Business IT average.

When learning something new, people often try to relate the new information back to something they already know in order to help make sense of the new concept or idea.  As a psychology major now working in the software world, I’ve found myself relating a lot of what I’m learning back to the psychological theories and concepts I learned in college.  Therefore, it is no surprise that upon reading The Twelve Principles of Agile Software, I’ve discovered that many of their principles map to organizational psych concepts.

Agile development theory approaches software development holistically.  I believe this is one of the reasons Agile projects have become so successful.  Rather than merely focusing on skill development, Agile methods foster leadership skills and teamwork among members of the development team itself, as well as between the development team, the project owner, and the stakeholders.  One avenue for this is to unify the development team and project owner with the common goal of achieving stakeholder satisfaction.

The first principle states, “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”  The question I had upon reading this was what do the authors mean by the term satisfaction?  When thinking about satisfaction, most people think of outcome satisfaction, or the ultimate outcome of something, in this case the functionality of the delivered software project.  Process satisfaction on the other hand, refers to the level of satisfaction associated with the method of developing the software, or how much the stakeholders enjoy the software development process.

David McCandless gave a TED talk  in July 2010 that focused on pairing data and design to help visualize patterns.  In his talk, McCandless takes subsets of data (Facebook status updates, spending, global media panic, etc.) and creates diagrams which expose interesting patterns and trends that you wouldn't think would exist.  Although the focus of McCandless' talk was about how to effectively use design to present complex information in a simple way, I was struck by his own claim that data is not the new oil, but rather that data is the new soil.  For QSM, this is certainly true!

QSM maintains a database of over 10,000 projects with which we are able to grow a jungle of ideas, from trend lines to queries about which programming languages result in the highest PIs.  With  the amount of soil that we have, we are able to provide insight into the world of software, just with the data that is graciously provided by our clients.  By collecting your own historical data in SLIM-DataManager, you can create your own trend lines in SLIM-Metrics to use in SLIM-Estimate and SLIM-Control, analyze your own data in SLIM-Metrics, tune your defect category percentages and calculate your own PI based on experience in SLIM-Estimate, and much, much more. 

I am often asked this question during SLIM Training classes.  I remember wondering about that myself.  It is a logical question since SLIM-Estimate workbooks are often imported into SLIM-Control to create the baseline project plan.  The answer is ‐‐ they are not directly related, because uncertainty ranges, probability curves, and control bounds are designed to perform different tasks.  This post is the first in a series looking at risk associated with an estimate, risk of your project plan, and handling deviations from the plan.

What are we talking about?

The first thing we need to do is define some very important terms that are often misused (I am the first to admit I have been guilty!).  I went to good old Dictionary.com and looked up the following:

In Part 1 of How Much Estimation? we noted that there is an optimal amount of time and effort that should be spent in producing an estimate based on the target cost of a project and business practice being supported.

In Part 2: Estimate the Estimate, we saw that the formula to calculate this optimal time (as measured at NASA)  calculates the Cost of Estimate as the Target_Cost raised to the power 0.35 (approximately the cube root of the Target Cost).  The factor that defines the business practice (either by early lifecycle phase or perhaps by the “expected precision” of the estimate) is a linear factor ranging from a value of 24 to a value of 115.

Those Caveats!

I mentioned that there were caveats with the calculation.  Here they are:

After reading Best Projects/Worst Projects in the QSM IT Almanac, a SLIM-Estimate^® user noted that the Best in Class Projects expended around 28% of their total project effort in analysis and design (SLIM Phase II) compared to 10% for the Worst in Class Projects. She wanted to know how she could tune her SLIM-Estimate templates to build in the typical best in class standard for Analysis and Design.

In SLIM-Estimate, effort and duration for phases I and II are calculated as a percentage of Phase III time and effort. To create a template for estimating phases II and III that will automatically allocate 28% of total project effort to analysis and design (Phase II), follow these simple steps.

• From the Estimate menu, select Solution Assumptions.  Make sure the “Include” check boxes for Phases II and III are selected.  Then click on the Phase Tuning tab.
• Click on the tab for Phase II.  (If you have previously customized the phase names, the default name for Phase II will reflect that).
• Click on the Manual button under Effort, and enter 28% for the effort percent.

That’s it. Your estimates based on this template will now automatically allocate 28% of total project effort to Analysis and Design (Phase II).

This procedure assumes that your estimates will be for SLIM Phases II and III, which, we have found, is the typical scope for most project estimates. However, if your estimates include Phases I and/or IV, you may have to increase the effort percent a bit to achieve the desired result.

After being away from QSM and the software world for three years, I was blown away by SLIM v8.0's dynamic product integration. I knew it was coming, yet I was still impressed by the simplicity and power of analysis promoted by real-time data and tool links across the SLIM Suite that frees managers to focus on the important program issues.

SLIM-MasterPlan is the center of the SLIM Suite product integration.  It improves upon previously existing program management features of aggregating multiple SLIM-Estimate projects and ancillary tasks with two new capabilities: 

• Linking SLIM-Control workbooks to provide real-time project tracking and control at the program level 
• Performing What If analysis at this higher management view to consider a wider range of potential outcomes.

The What If analysis feature is what I want to highlight.

A good personal development coach knows the "power of the question."  Questions lead to discovery, innovation, and action that brings about positive change.  Better questions lead to better answers.  SLIM's power and distinction has always been fast and easy evaluation of the impact of change, and exploring the realm of possible outcomes.  That's what we are doing when we ask ourselves "What If…?" (or our boss asks us - and we better know the answer!).  SLIM's solution logs make it easy to compare estimates, plans, and forecasts to alternative solutions, QSM trends, and your historical project database.

We are pleased to announce that QSM has a new SLIM product tour. This online demo shows you how to quickly and easily use SLIM-Estimate to create an estimate validated by industry benchmarks or your own project history. The demo then demonstrates how to negotiate trade-offs and highlights some of the new features of the tool. The product tour also includes SLIM-MasterPlan, which allows you to roll-up multiple estimates and is ideal for iterative and non-iterative developments.

View the new SLIM demo here and tell us what you think!

QSM is pleased to announce the SLIM-Estimate^® Certification Program.  Specifically designed to help our customers ensure the technical excellence of their SLIM users, this program increases the business value of our software project estimation tools to your organization. 

How Certification Is Achieved:

In order to be awarded certification, a user must demonstrate competence in the following areas: