Challenges
A new customer’s first estimate with SLIM is a big financial application – a multi-year project, costing millions of dollars. QSM provides the support included with the tool license during their estimation process to help the customer get up to speed quickly and to get good value from the SLIM toolset.
In the past the company used a team of two dedicated estimators, one from their technical team and one from their quality team, and approximately one additional resource spread among several people that needed to provide input to the process. In total, three people over a three week time period were required to generate their estimate. Solution
Using the SLIM tools with QSM’s support, one estimator worked full time for three days interacting intermittently with various technical people, totaling approximately two persondays. The analysis included three sizing techniques: Use Cases, High Level Function Points, and Analogy. The overall team could not be less than 40 and could not exceed 50 people. The SLIM analyst generated several alternatives. Outcomes
The customer realized a 2.5 week schedule savings and a 72 person hour savings equivalent to $7,200 in savings. Since the customer completes approximately 8 estimates a year, that translates into a time savings of 4.6 schedule months and a cost savings of $57,600. Keep in mind, this is only the savings the company gained from the initial estimate and doesn’t even address the cost savings that may be gained through different business implementation strategies or prevention of signing up to deliver on unrealistic schedules.