International Users Conference
2011 7th Annual International SEER Conference on Project Estimation
In 2011 Galorath's international user's conference focused on capabilities and use cases for our software and IT infrastructure estimation solutions, SEER® for Software and SEER® for Information Technology. The conference was held on Thursday December 8th at the Philips Stadium, Eindhoven, Netherlands - the home of PSV Eindhoven (http://www.psv.nl/Philips-Stadium.htm). We would like to thank our Co-Host, Ordina, for their support.
This was the first time that Galorath has held an event outside the USA and UK and we were very excited about exposing the capabilities of SEER to a wider audience. The following presenters were at the conference:
2011 Presentations
Although Application Management consumes 70 to 80 percent of the Total Cost of Ownership, estimating and bench¬marking the related effort still receives little attention. Apparently, estimating Application Management is not so simple. One of the main reasons for this is that the scope of Application Management is more diffuse than the scope of a project. When Application Management is outsourced to an IT service provider, both parties need to have a clear understanding what activities will be outsourced and what activities will remain with the outsourcing organization. For the purpose of that understanding, Ordina has developed the Service Component Model as part of our Service Definition for Application Outsourcing. When we have defined what activities are in scope for an Application Management service offering, we are able to use this model as a basis to estimate the related effort and cost. To be able to do this in a transparent way, based on experience data, we have combined the vision of our Service Component Model with the estimating power and references of SEER-IT. This model is now ready to be used as a reference estimate in the general approach for estimating and pricing of software services for Application Management in the Oracle EBS domain.
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The presentation briefly introduces CAST and its enterprise software offering AIP. The primary focus will be on the results of the annual benchmark results study done by CAST via the Appmarq program. These results will show the significance of structural software quality and the impact of (non-)adherence to standards.
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Lukoil is in transition of splitting from its IT department, known as ‘Lukoil IT’. Part of the process is identifying and organizing the relationship between the two new entities. In order to create a mature relationship it’s important to have a transparent, solid and consistent basis for the services. Both entities need to know what is realistic in regard to pricing, performance and quality. Not only for the short term (initial dependency) but also for the long term (competition). The ‘Lukoil IT’ services include software development, application maintenance and support and infrastructure services and support.
Discussions with Lukoil, Lukoil IT, SRG (Galorath’s partner in Russia) and Galorath created consensus that parametric cost engineering could be a basis for estimation, negotiation and benchmarking. A prerequisite is that the services need to be modeled in such a way that these models can be used for future projects. The concepts that lead to the next steps are depicted as part of the presentation.
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The presentation introduces NATO, NACMA and the ACCS program first, and then focuses on the role that SEER-SEM plays in the cost activities for the agency. Some of the best practices applied at NATO are shared.
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Every software business has to be able to budget and plan its software development projects realistically. Since software projects are usually fraught with uncertainty, they inherently involve planning risks right from the start. Consequently, it is important to manage cost-related risks in order to monitor them and implement adequate contingency plans when a crisis occurs. Since not all projects are equal, it is important to identify the specific factors (cost drivers) that have a positive or negative influence on productivity. Thus, the use of appropriate cost estimation approaches does not only contribute to accurate project planning and successful risk management, but also to improved software processes and overall organization maturity. The presentation will illustrate the CoBRA® approach for creating risk-based effort estimation models.
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Worldwide, many Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are sent out every day to potential suppliers. In modern RFPs, clients are trying to gather objective criteria with which they can analyze and evaluate bids from different suppliers. However, the questions asked in these RFPs are often hard to answer for immature organizations, but sometimes even harder to answer by more mature organizations.
We believe that there is no such thing as a standard productivity rate, but that there are a number of factors, like duration, size and complexity, that together lead to a realistic productivity rate for an organization. This also means that in the software industry, quotations from suppliers are often not realistic. The consequences of unrealistic quotations are severe and imply almost a certain failure! Client organizations should become aware of the questions they are supposed to ask in RFPs and they should learn how to evaluate the quotations from the suppliers. This presentation addresses both topics.
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Predicting the effort for the development of software is a challenge, but predicting the maintenance effort is often even more difficult. The maintenance effort consists of the effort required for incident management and also the effort required for enhancement management. The focus of this presentation will be on enhancement management with an emphasis when this maintenance is performed by another team or even another organisation than the development organisation. What aspects will influence the effort and how can we achieve a reliable estimating approach? How can we determine these aspects and how to deal with changes in this aspects over a period of time? This presentation will give an overview of the experiences from Logica with respect to estimating the effort for application maintenance.
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2010 6th Annual International SEER Conference on Project Estimation
On May 19th, 2010, Galorath conducted its 6th annual worldwide conference on project estimation. The venue was the Williams F1 Conference Centre in Grove, Oxfordshire.
This year’s content included presentations from many distinguished companies with expert speakers including topics on Cost IQ, SEER for IT, and estimating in a large corporation. Everyone had the opportunity to learn from SEER customer experiences, shared innovative new strategies, and real world results. Attendees were able to visit the Williams F1 museum and take a “Help for Heroes” charity drive in an F1 simulator at this customer focused event.
In recognition of their contributions to project estimation, two awards were presented at this year’s conference: one to Willy Foolen for his outstanding work and contributions in the field of software estimation and the second to Euroclear for their services to estimating.
2010 Presentations
This presentation seeks to share the complexities of rolling out a common, consistent IT estimation process across a highly complex and very global company - Ford Motor Company.
Over the past 6 months, James Mankin has had responsibility for moving Ford’s entire European IT organisation (including software, hardware and IT consulting organisations) from their existing local estimation processes into a joined-up, centralised global estimation process.
People working for large, multinational companies will recognise the challenges - the resistance to change, the lack of trust in centrally-provided services, and the sheer energy invested by teams to avoid “the estimators”!
Over the course of the presentation, Mankin will explain the complexities of the organisation, the approach taken to ensure success and some early results. Illustrations will be given on the approach to managing an application portfolio, the different types of estimates offered as services, and how to engage application and hardware teams and earned their trust.
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The Ministry of Defense's (MoD) Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) is engaged in studies for the MoD to explore the cost-capability trade space for future Unmanned Air Systems. This work involves the estimation of Whole Life Cost for a range of conceptual air vehicle designs. This presentation describes the cost modeling approach used by DSTL, including the assessment of alternative costing tools and methods and their suitability for both validation efforts and collaborative working with industry partners.
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Dan Galorath's talk consists of two parts:
- Hot topics in estimating from his blog - covers current issues and trends in estimation, planning and control
- What’s new and what’s coming with SEER - covers each of the SEER products, some of the best new items and the roadmap.
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Over the past five years, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has established a centralized portfolio planning division which supports IRS Enterprise Governance, where all IT-related investment decisions are made. With centralization of IT portfolio development and decisioning, demand for investment analysis services (scope definition and resource estimation) far exceeds capacity. To facilitate very quick, consistent, and repeatable development of resource estimates, the IRS Estimation Program Office (EPO) developed an estimation approach based on a standardized WBS applicable to all IRS IT projects populated through extensive use of resource catalogs. Resource catalogs are predefined portions of scope that include labor and materials across the full life cycle. Catalogs are built and maintained using SEER for IT functional models and delivered to the WBS via SEER for IT’s scenario function. Additionally, catalog use reduces the effort and cost required to document a project’s technical baseline definition. This briefing begins to outline how the EPO develops, utilizes, and maintains resource catalogs.
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The objective of the presentation is to describe the evolution of the project estimation review process in Euroclear projects (from support to PL towards an independent assessment mission) and position SEER as supporting tool in this E2E process aiming at better controlling project budget:
- Independent budget review of application development projects
- Support to outsourcing contracts discussions
- Assessment of IT division productivity
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2009 5th Annual International SEER Conference on Project Estimation: Estimating United.
On March 19th, 2009, Galorath conducted its 5th annual worldwide conference on project estimating. The conference title, Estimating United, was fitting both for its venue and content. The venue was Old Trafford, Manchester, United Kingdom, home of the world famous Manchester United Football Team. The content included presentations in two tracks from a variety of world class company participants, all united in their efforts to improve project estimation practices. Presentations covered a variety of topics in the area of project estimation, planning and control.
In recognition of their contributions to project estimation, two awards were presented at this year’s conference — one to Charles Symonds for his outstanding work and contributions in the field of software estimation and the second to Alan Jones of BAE Systems for his continued efforts to provide both a platform of knowledge for less experienced cost engineers and for his dedication to the Association of Cost Engineers activities to bring to our profession a “tiered approach to accreditation.” They join past recipients of this award which include Raj Roy, Cranfield University; David Reuss, Rolls Royce; and John Henson, AgustaWestland.
The 2nd SEER conference of the 2009 series was held in El Segundo, CA on October 8th and 9th, 2009.
2009 Presentations
- Life Cycle Costing in an International Organisation for Armament Cooperation - by Franck Ramaroson
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OCCAR-EA is an International organisation with full legal personality since 2001. It was created to co-ordinate, control and implement co-operative armament programmes that are assigned to it by the Member States. Today OCCAR is managing 7 Programmes with a total portfolio of 44 billions Euros. OCCAR is clearly tasked from its Convention to identify Cost Effective options to the nations both during Development and Production and for the In Service Phase of a Programme. In this frame, OCCAR-EA has developed a Life Cycle Costing capability within the general approach of Through Life Management. This allows the identification of common and cost effective solutions and informs the decision makers on these opportunities. The presentation will show the steps followed to set up this capability and will point out the specifics linked to an international Agency, a snapshot of the process in place, and the types of studies that have been performed.
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- The Value of Cost Estimating for Cost Management - by Goof Pruijsen
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Costs are determined in the very early stages of the Product Creation Process. Not using this fact, but only to focus on ‘solving technical puzzles’ or stressing Time-to-Market is a missed opportunity that in the end makes the business less competitive. In many companies Cost estimation can be a very valuable tool for purchasing in determining the ‘should cost’ if only used in this way however cost estimation becomes a ‘purchasing tool’ only.
Changing to Target Costing means: Define the Customer Value before development starts, and derive the Target Cost from this. Then start studies to address the economic feasibility of new products, using cost estimation and cost driver analysis. This way cost estimation becomes a strategic decision support tool with less need to repair costs later on.
Goof will address the following during his presentation:
- How we used to address costs (not)
- Change to Target Costing
- Role of Cost Estimation for target costing
- Some Examples of Cost Reduction achievements using Cost Estimation
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- Procurement Costs – Transparency and Assurance - by Mark Gornall
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Procured Equipment, Material and Services represents over two thirds of the initial cost of a military air platform and the resulting through life support activity. In the current climate of partnering and price transparency linked to a business environment increasingly focussed on ethical conduct, commercial parametric estimating models can provide confidence for both supplier and customer through open cost modelling based on industry standards of performance.
This presentation will outline the current activity at BAE Systems – Military Air Solutions aimed at achieving these goals.
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- Understanding the Mysteries of MOD Support Costs - by Neil Morrill and Steve Robinson
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The costs incurred during the service life of equipment are a significant proportion of the whole life cost. However, these costs are not well understood and there are inconsistencies within the MOD as to how these are collected, collated and used. These costs are also used within the analysis at Dstl to inform high level Balance of Investment (BOI) decisions and it is therefore imperative that these costs are included as accurately as possible. The Support Costs study, funded by Director Equipment Plans (DEP), was commissioned to address this problem.
The presentation will cover how the project team tackled the problem and explore some of the conclusions from the work.
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- Embedding Galorath’s Estimating Tools into a Project & Programme Management Suite - by Andy Robinson
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In this presentation we will show how the Galorath estimating tools have been integrated into Ninth Wave’s Project & Programme Management (PPM) suite.
In most PPM products estimates for projects are entered manually and there is no audit trail provided for senior managers to see how the estimate was derived. Ninth Wave has enhanced its PPM suite to be able to generate an estimate automatically into a project by using the Galorath products in a “black box” fashion.
The key benefits of this integrated approach are:
- estimating best practice is embedded into project management across the organisation
- drill-down capability to understand key inputs and drivers for an estimate
- ability to model different scenarios with just a couple of mouse clicks
- audit trail provided for all steps associated with generating an estimate
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- Software Sizing – the weakest link of estimating? - by Charles Symons
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Charles Symons presents data on the performance of the software industry which in certain respects is dreadful. Evidence will be shown suggesting that this poor performance is at least partly due to weaknesses in performance measurements and in estimating. By "estimating", we mean:
- initial estimation of the product size,
- methods for estimating project effort and duration from the initial size,
- processes by which estimating is integrated with project management,
where the first of these elements is the weakest link (though the third is also often weak).
The talk will then trace the development of methods of sizing software from using SLOC, to Albrecht’s idea of sizing functionality (now the IFPUG method), to the COSMIC method. Charles will briefly compare these methods and show how the COSMIC method overcomes weaknesses of earlier approaches.
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- What’s New and “Dan Galorath on Estimating” - by Dan Galorath
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What's new and what's coming in SEER will be featured.
Additionally Dan will discuss selections from his blog. Dan will discuss selections from metrics, effectiveness measurement, the real costs of a variety of undertakings, what is ITIL versus ISO 9000, the risk of IT projects, what the assets of failed banks really are worth, and lots more. He weighs in on a wealth of topics both timeless and contemporary.
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- Computer-aided Business Case Assessment in Engineering Design Education - by Askin Isikveren
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In all engineering initiatives the only acceptable basis for launching a product development programme is one in which low risk and high return-on-investment in the shortest possible timeline is secured. Up to 80% of the life-cycle cost of most high valued-added engineered products is incurred during the conceptual design phase, and, by the time completion of the design and development stage occurs 95% of the product cost is fixed and most of the development cost is spent. The University of Bristol, Department of Aerospace Engineering, and, the Department of Engineering Mathematics via its Engineering Design degree programme offer many examples of group project orientated education for undergraduates. The major student group projects for academic year 2008/09 include: (1) Airbus UK project “250-passenger Transport Aircraft Optimised for Multi-stop, Long-range Operations; (2) Arup project “Elevated Transport and Entertainment Ride System”; (3) Motorola project “Water Powered Pico Generator for a Mobile Phone Base Station”; (4) Hewlett-Packard project “Personal Carbon Footprint System”; (5) GE Aviation project “Automation of Pitch Control of a Propeller Engine; and, (6) Babcock project “Design Optimisation of a Nuclear Flask ‘Grab’ System”. A review of business case results from the aforementioned student group project work using the Galorath SEER-H cost estimation software will be presented.
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- Decisions, (Multi-Criterion, Subjective, unbounded), Decisions - by Chris Hutchings
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The primary objective of this paper is to introduce two alternative methods, Absolute and Empirical Referencing, used to minimize the subjectivity surrounding some of the more crucial processes associated with project management and analysis. The Estimate by Comparison solution developed by Galorath Incorporated will be used as the vehicle to illustrate comparative sizing for the purposes of Parametric Estimation along with a few other more contemporary applications.
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- Estimation in ERP Environments - by Cees Kuijpers
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- Organisations have ambitious plans when purchasing ERP
- More than 75% believe in quick wins and grand return of investment
- In practice one will go a long way of learning
- 30% - 70% cost reduction is possible
- Therefore one needs a strong strategy in standardisation, developing
- Kknowing the pitfalls and monitoring the principal cost drivers are essential
- Benchmarking and estimating the projects and their environments will bring success
- Example insurance company:
- Starting up with conventional planning and estimating
- Gathering facts and figures
- Switching to ERP environment planning
- Building up company specific planning data
- Creating private knowledge base
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- The 12 Sins of Estimation - by Pradeep Chennavajhula
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Sin is a term used mainly in a religious context to describe an act that violates a moral code of conduct or the state of having committed such a violation. In monotheistic religions, the code of conduct is determined by God. Colloquially, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, harmful, or alternative might be termed "sinful". Knowingly, and unknowingly, we as estimation experts commit sins in the area of Estimation, leading to harmful effects on the project management, tracking and control. With the premise that not doing wrong things is a way to do the right, the presentation highlights the common sins committed by experts in the field of estimation.
Taking into account the current practical realities of business, the presentation explains how we can improve the process of estimation, and how to gather the critical mass required to make change happen in an organization.>/p>
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