New Survey Casts Shadow On Cloud Computing Adoption
15% of corporate customers planning to use cloud in the next year.
A network world article shared results of a survey:
About 15% of corporate customers are considering cloud computing over the next year
The survey of 300 corporations worldwide found that 38% are undecided or unsure about whether they will adopt cloud services, and another 47% said they are not considering implementing cloud in the next year. Security is the biggest roadblock.
85% of corporate customers will not implement a private or public cloud in 2009 due to security concerns.
The findings may be surprising given the industry’s current obsession with cloud computing, but the numbers aren’t too far off the findings of other surveys. Forrester recently found that 25% of enterprises with at least 1,000 employees are using or plan to use hosted virtual server offerings such as Amazon EC2, and that fewer than 20% of smaller companies plan to do so.
Earlier this year, Gartner said that cloud application infrastructure technologies are not yet mature and that adoption right now is limited mostly to “pioneers and trailblazers.”
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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New Update To SEER for Hardware, Electronics & Systems Hits Beta
I had the opportunity to see the SEER-H beta presentation given to customers today. It provides some exciting new functionality to help organizations better manage development and make the appropriate decisions.
Additionally the latest version helps the user deal with funding constraints…Â That is when the program estimated cost is more than constrained funding.
As requested by many customers, the Electro-Optical Sensor performance based plug-in now deals with lasers and works with numerous platforms in addition to unmanned space: manned space, manned and unmanned air, and missile. MTBF is also estimated. New technologies include:
- Refractive Telescopes
- Reflective Telescopes
- Reflective Telescopes with Scanning Mirror
- Linear/ Area InGaAs
- Area Bicolor HgCdTe
- Area Microbolometer
- Joule-Thompson with Pressure Vessel
- One-Axis Piezoelectric Actuator
The IC plug-in includes new RFIC technologies for mixed signal and MMIC.
If you are a SEER-H user and would like to be included in the beta program contact your SEER representative.
PS I hope all you Microbolometer engineers have fun with the new version 
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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SEER for Hardware, Electronics & Systems Video
See the introductory video on SEER-H for development, production, operations & support estimation, planning & control.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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IT Savvy: 20% Higher Margins From MIT
MIT Sloane researchers have released a new book, “IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know To Go From Pain To Gain“ by Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross,  describing what non-IT business leaders need to know to make IT part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
 ”Firms with above average IT spending and IT savvy have 20% higher margins, those with an above average percentage of shared applications and IT savvy have 30% higher ROAs, and firms with above average IT infrastructure spending and IT savvy have revenue growth three percentage points higher than their industry average.” Â
They define three major points that must be addressed:
1. Actively choose how to spend IT dollars and assign clear decision rights and accountability…. and eliminate information silos and unscalable projects
2. Automate core business processes: business innovation and execution  ”Start by identifying what’s not changing. The core business processes in your firm that are not changing define a reliable set of reusable IT-supported data and business processes. The digitized platform standardizes and automates these processes, thereby increasing reliability, decreasing operational cost, and ensuring quality.”
3. Exploiting the platform for profitable growth: “Once those changes are made, the addition of a new feature or geographic region is much faster because companies don’t have to spend time integrating a new product or service with the silos that exist. Instead, it bolts on like a Lego block, and with this approach, you get faster time to market on products and services which leads to higher revenue growth.”
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation
Whenever I open my book and see the quotes from Steve McConnell’s 10 deadly sins of software estimating I am struck that everyone should be aware of these sins. So here they are again:
Steve McConnell, in “10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation,” has defined ten common mistakes people make in estimating the scope of a software project. In the first scenario described above, the project team committed almost all of his “sins.” In the second, the project team was nearly flawless. The sins are:
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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Software Testing Effort Estimation Bottoms-Up Article
There is a decent article on manually decomposing testing and estimating bottoms up.
While it would be much more accurate to use SEER for estimating testing the article provides a decent approach if you don’t have estimation software. Of course, estimating without estimating software has been called one of the deadly sins of software estimating by Steve McConnell.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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Conceptual Association of Functional Size Measurement Methods
The May issue of the IEEE journal included an article on a unified method of counting function points. The authors discuss the conceptual similarities and differences between functional size measurement methods and introduce a model for unification. They call it the “Unified Model.”
 They explored resolving the differences between the IFPUG counting (predominant method), the COSMIC counting rules (gaining popularity, primarily in Europe), and Mark II function points (which I don’t know of anyone using). For full disclosure, Galorath’s Ton Dekkers  is the president of NESMA, the force behind COSMIC and Galorath has a relationship with IFPUG as well. These were the three functional sizing methods made into ISO standards.  From my understanding ISO chose three methods and assumed the market would decide which were useful.Â
Seems to be a well written paper but we (and I am sure others) have been able to convert from method to method with much simpler approaches.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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Combining Agile and Traditional Development
Gary Gack , software process consultant, did an interesting webinar and discussed the combining of Agile and traditional development approaches. His conclusions are that this does not have a negative impact on either cost or defects.
I also found it interesting that this is pretty much the process used within Galorath:
- Traditional development for clear, large, stable requirements
- Agile for Fuzzy, small, unstable requirements.
I loved Gary’s example of a credit card system as a reimplementation. New rules coming from the government but we don’t even know the rules yet.  Can’t just do Agile…and give people a partial solution.  The entire system is needed or not at all (although not at all has severe business issues). Conclusion was Agile for user interface and interest calculation, and traditional for the rest of the system. Refreshing to see the avocation of combining Agile and traditional. Good job Gary.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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Cost Estimating Body of Knowledge (CEBok) Now Available From SCEA
The Cost Estimating Body of Knowledge (CEBok), the most robust cost guidebook available,  is the product of SCEA (Society of cost estimating and analysis) The CEBok covers every aspect of cost estimating. CEBok is available for e nominal licensing fee from SCEA. The following is the outline of the CEBok.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.
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Estimating Poorly Defined Agile Projects
From Twitter today came the following definition: Epicac – In software development with Scrum, a feature so horribly defined it makes you vomit when asked to estimate how long it will take.
I know anything can be estimated and that using ranges will generate a mean estimate and range.  No need to vomit with estimating rigour. SEER has knowledge bases and sizing methods to size a Single Scrum. I recommend ALWAYS preparing an estimate of the overall program: effort, schedule, cost, risk.. Then using SEER for the difficult tiny Sprints. I always cringe when a project says “we can’t estimate. We will just tell you when we are done” That is not agile, that is a cop-out. How many stakeholders will approve of such a project?
PS I just Googled the word Epicac. At least one definition refers to a computer that wrote poems and fell in love. Glad I missed that one in the past.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page or call us at +1 310 414-3222.