Coffee Maker Cost Estimation Using SEER for Manufacturing
The department of Industrial Management & Systems Engineering at West Virginia University used SEER for Manufacturing (formerly SEER-DFM) to determine the costs of an off the shelf coffee maker and identified potential cost savings by redesigning for manufacturability. This is one of the strengths of SEER-MFG: the ability to understand costs of a design and determine ways to reduce product costs. One group was able to reduce costs from $21.25 to $11.53. They found that:
“SEER is an estimation and analysis application that lets you identify, evaluate and manage the complex array of cost, labor, assembly, process, part design, material and production variables that effect manufacturing operations from its most comprehensive knowledge base” and that “it is used to facilitate proactive real time cost impact assessments of commodity design alternatives in today’s global sourcing environment.”
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.
What You Don’t Measure Can Hurt You
Following up on a new year’s resolution I brought a scanner into my office. I was determined to scan what was necessary and throw away what was not. Based on the findings at the bottom of my in-basket, I generally went electronic sometime in 2003.
As I was throwing away old copies of IEEE Software I noticed an article entitled “What You Don’t Measure Can Hurt You.” With such a title and since I have had it in my in box since 2003 I just had to take a break and read it. Its points are as valid today as they were in 2003:
“In 1924, Walter Shewhart adapted statistical methods to the problem of quality control in the manufacturing sector.� In manufacturing, the observed and actual number of defects is not significantly different. In software development these two numbers routinely vary significantly. Contributing causes for extreme variation in software measurement include the following:
- People are the software development process
- Software measurement might introduce more variation than the process
- Size metrics do not count discrete, identical units
- SPC must be adapted to software to provide a tool that isolates variation requiring corrective action from variation that is unavoidable and random
One of the paper’s great examples is: if we assign a smaller team the inspection may find fewer defects.� That doesn’t equate to higher quality software. So measure both and be careful not to draw erroneous conclusions.
Thankfully IEEE Software is available electronically. Here is the article “What You Don’t Measure Can Hurt You”
PS: I found a candy bar in the bottom of that in-basket too. Scary.
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.
DoD Contractor Estimating Systems Deficiencies Can Withhold 10%
A draft rule for business systems has been posted by the Government�allowing the withholding of 10% of payments for each of six systems, with a maximum of 50% withholdings. These systems include contractor business systems including 1) estimating, 2) purchasing, 3) accounting, 4) earned value, 5) property and 6) material management.
In 2009 the congressionally chartered Commission on Wartime Contracting stated in its June 2009 interim report to Congress that:
“Weak control systems increase the risk of unallowable and unreasonable costs on government contracts”
Comments will be accepted until March 16, 2010. Email to dfars@osd.mil with subject DFARS Case 2009-D038.
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.
Information Systems Risk Management Consortium: Capers Jones, Gary Gack, Leon Kappelman, Dan Galorath
The consortium is the result of four of the industry’s leaders (Capers Jones, Gary Gack, Leon Kappelman, Dan Galorath) deciding to pool our expertise and form a consortium called the Information Systems Risk Management Consortium for the purpose of offering our combined talents to assist the information systems industry. The process improvement results we’ve achieved with other diversified government and industry organizations and large distributed companies has convinced us we can help you accelerate your strategic initiatives while improving tactical performance with measurable results within a 6 to 18 month calendar window.
Our experiences can help your teams identify and reduce the potential risks earlier in the project life cycle. In most cases the problems and failures are avoidable if you know what to look for, what to do about them, have repeatable processes, appropriate practices, and utilize independent expertise like ours both before and after contracts are awarded. Federal Government organizations and world-class companies often lack the necessary in-house expertise to ensure success in these high-risk, complex, multi-year initiatives. Independent specialists with world-class experience and capabilities can provide the critical differentiator needed to manage successfully large high-risk projects.
Software and IT Projects are Risky
Failures are common, especially as project size increases. Problems are not uncommon … but are preventable.
A Risk Reduction Strategy
This Consortium has expertise and a desire to help organizations improve its software and IT project outcomes. We offer a preliminary discussion with senior IT management team to discuss an approach to software and IT project risk containment. Over a century of relevant experience helping complex organizations like yours makes us confident future outcomes will be greatly improved with our assistance.
Consortium Members
Capers Jones
Capers Jones is the President and CEO of Capers Jones & Associates LLC. He is also the founder and former chairman of Software Productivity Research LLC (SPR), and holds the title of Chief Scientist Emeritus at SPR. Capers Jones founded SPR in 1984.
Mr. Jones is a well-known author, researcher, and international public speaker. Among his book titles are Patterns of Software Systems Failure and Success (Prentice Hall 1994); Applied Software Measurement, 3rd edition (McGraw Hill 2008); Software Quality: Analysis and Guidelines for Success (International Thomson 1997); Estimating Software Costs, 2nd edition(McGraw Hill 2007); and Software Assessments, Benchmarks, and Best Practices(Addison Wesley Longman 2000). The 3rd edition of his book Applied Software Measurement was published in the Spring of 2008 and his most recent book, Software Engineering Best Practices,was published by McGraw Hill in October of 2009.
Mr. Jones and his colleagues have collected historical data from more than 600 corporations and more than 30 government organizations. This historical data is a key resource for judging the effectiveness of software process improvement methods. This data is also widely cited in software litigation cases where quality, productivity, and schedules are involved. Mr. Jones has been retained as an expert witness in 15 software-related lawsuits dealing with breach of contract and software tax issues.
Mr. Jones has consulted at more than 150 large corporations and a number of government organizations such as NASA, the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Courts. He has also worked with several State governments.
Gary Gack
Gary Gack is the founder and President of Process-Fusion.net, a provider of e-Learning, Assessments, Strategy advice, Training, and Coaching related to integration and deployment of software and IT industry best practices. Mr. Gack holds an MBA from the Wharton School and is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. In addition he is an ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE), a Certified Scrum Master, a Visiting Scientist with the Software Engineering Institute (2006) where he co-authored “Measuring for Performance Driven Improvement 1,” a course that he is an authorized instructor and holds the ITIL Foundation Certification. He has more than 40 years of diverse experience in the software and IT industry, including more than 20 years focused on process improvement. He is the author of numerous articles and a forthcoming book entitled Managing the “Black Hole”: The Executive’s Guide to Software Project Risk.
Mr. Gack has extensive experience with problem project assessment and recovery. His areas of specific expertise include best practices assessments, large scale critical path planning (projects with 10,000+ tasks), and software quality assurance methods (including software inspections, combinatorial test methods, static and dynamic analysis of test coverage, and other related methods). In addition he has extensive experience with software metrics and models used to forecast and evaluate the impact of process changes on effectiveness and efficiency.
Leon A. Kappelman
Leon A. Kappelman, Ph.D. is a research scientist, teacher, author, speaker, and consultant dedicated to helping organizations better manage their information, systems, and technology assets. He is Director Emeritus of the Information Systems Research Center and a Professor of Information Systems in the Information Technology & Decision Sciences Department of the College of Business at the University of North Texas, where he is also a Fellow of the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge. Dr. Kappelman founded and chairs the Society for Information Management’s Enterprise Architecture Working Group and edited their book The SIM Guide to Enterprise Architecture (CRC Press, 2010).
Dr. Kappelman has assisted many public and private organizations (including the Department of Veteran Affairs, EDS, the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Experian, Computer Associates, IBM, JC Penney, Kraft Foods, SAIC, the State of Texas, Texas Health Resources, the Treasury Department of Canada, the United Nations, Wells Fargo, and the World Bank) with technology management activities including project management, software development, continuity of operations, strategic planning, governance, enterprise architecture, and IT workforce management. His research and publications on the early warning signs of software project failure are widely recognized.
Professor Kappelman has testified before the US Congress on technology legislation and IT management practices. He has lectured and conducted seminars and workshops on many management, business, and technology topics in North America, Europe, and Asia. His work has been reported in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Dallas Morning News, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, L.A. Times, and scores of other newspapers and magazines; he has appeared on CNN, CNBC, PBS, ABC World News Tonight, as well as numerous local and regional television and radio stations.
Websites: Leon Kappelman
Dan Galorath
Dan Galorath is the President and CEO of Galorath Incorporated. During his over three decades in the industry, Mr. Galorath has been solving a variety of management, costing, systems, and software problems for both information technology and embedded systems.
Mr. Galorath has performed all aspects of software development and software management. He has reorganized troubled software projects, assessed their progress, applied proven methodologies and plans for completion, and estimated cost to complete. He has personally managed these projects to successful completion. He has created and implemented software management policies, and reorganized (as well as designed and managed) software development projects.
His company, Galorath Incorporated, developed the SEER applications, methods, and training for Software and Information Technology cost, schedule, risk analysis, and management decision support. He is one of the principal developers of the SEER-SEM™ software evaluation model.
His teaching experience includes development and presentation of courses in Software Cost, Schedule, and Risk Analysis; Software Management; Software Engineering; to name a few. Among Mr. Galorath’s published works are papers encompassing software cost modeling, testing theory, software life cycle error prediction and reduction, and software and systems requirements definition. Mr. Galorath is a contributing author of IT Measurement, Advice from the Experts (Prentice Hall) and Mr Galorath’s book Software Sizing, Estimation, and Risk Managementwas published March 2006 (Auerbach). Mr. Galorath publishes a blog, “Dan Galorath on Estimating” at http://www.galorath.com/wp/.
Website Dan Galorath
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.
Heavy Rains Knock Out Power at El Segundo Headquarters
The major storms knocked power out in the entire building (supposed to be the best class A building in El Segundo). Power transmission equipment was damaged. It has been out since about 11am Pacific on Wednesday. Authorities are hoping to have power restored by midday Thursday.
UPDATE: Power restored late Thursday evening.
I was in the gym when I heard the explosion and smelled electrical burning. So much for the building backup generators and our server battery backups.
Phoenix, Washington DC, Florida, North Carolina, UK, Netherlands numbers are all working, with people standing by to help.
Backup Technical Support Line: (213) 973-3787
We are hoping to have the phones forwarded early Thursday morning.
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.
Capers Jones, Gary Gack, Leon Kappleman, Dan Galorath Team Up To Improve IT
From the consortium web site:
Information Systems Risk Management Consortium Charter
Written on January 28, 2010 at 4:25 pm, by adminThe consortium is the result of four of the industry’s leaders (Capers Jones, Gary Gack, Leon Kappelman, Dan Galorath) deciding to pool our expertise and form a consortium called the Information Systems Risk Management Consortium for the purpose of offering our combined talents to assist the information systems industry. The process improvement results we’ve achieved with other diversified government and industry organizations and large distributed companies has convinced us we can help you accelerate your strategic initiatives while improving tactical performance with measurable results within a 6 to 18 month calendar window.
Our experiences can help your teams identify and reduce the potential risks earlier in the project life cycle. In most cases the problems and failures are avoidable if you know what to look for, what to do about them, have repeatable processes, appropriate practices, and utilize independent expertise like ours both before and after contracts are awarded. Federal Government organizations a world-class companies often lack the necessary in-house expertise to ensure success in these high-risk, complex, multi-year initiatives. Independent specialists with world-class experience and capabilities can provide the critical differentiator needed to manage successfully large high-risk projects.
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.
Estimating FPGAs
Integrated Circuit estimation is always interesting since traditional metrics for estimating hardware don’t apply. That is why we developed the SEER-IC plug-in for our SEER for Hardware, Electronics Systems. Here is a document on estimating FPGAs that Sam Sanchez is presenting this week.
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.
Software Product Engineering Benchmark By Aberdeen
According to Aberdeen research study Software Project Engineering Outsourcing.. the value of Agile in outsourcing
- Reduce Development Cost 57%
- Lack of In-House Resources 50%
- Allow internal staff to focus on innovation 30%
- Improve time to market 25%
Benchmarking
| Productivity Scorecard Comparison | |||
| Best (Top 20%) | Average (Middle 50%) | Bottom 30%) | |
| Project cost | -17% | 3% | 22% |
| Time TO Market | -10% | 2% | 28 |
| User Satisfaction | 18% | 4% | -4% |
ITIL Usage
Even best in class organizations onl 22% se ITIL with virtually no adoption by the average or laggards
Agile Development
Agile developers are more likely to use project management tools, code development and testing technologies, real-time progress tracking and other tools.
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.
Economics For Product Development Decisions… My First Inkling
I had to smile when I was clearing out old documents and found my rationale for reimbursement of my tuition for MBA courses in micro and macroeconomics. Talk about being a SEER of the future. This is April 6, 1978, before I started Galorath. Why do I include this…. the statements were right on… better decisions, improved communications, more successful development with SEER.
The classes I am required to take during this quarter and Macro and Micro Economics. In addition to enhancing my effectiveness in my current job function via broader prospective of business, the application of the concepts of economic analysis will help me make better decisions, communicate data in a more clear, concise format, and more effectively analyse product development considerations (for example: additional development time to produce a superior product versus earlier delivery of an adequate product)
PS: This was sometime after my project was killed because I would not cut the cost and schedule by a third from my original estimate.
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.
SEER-H Expanded Technology Support for Electro Optical Sensors
The latest SEER-H update also included major enhancements to the SEER-EOS electro optical sensor model.
SEER-EOS adds specific features to extend the capability of SEER-H to estimate the life-cycle costs of electro-optical sensors. SEER-EOS estimates are derived from key technical and performance parameters.
The original EOS model release handled space based systems. While the space community was thrilled, organizations with other requirements grumbled. Well, the wait is over. The Electro-Optical Sensor (EOS) update offers estimation of sensors on space based, air vehicles, missile, and other complex platforms.
In addition to an overall database update, several new technologies have been added, including a new technology category for Laser sensors which includes Laser Diode and Diode Pumpted NdYAG Lasers. New and revised optical devices include Refractive Telescopes (both Visible and IR), Reflective Telescopes and Reflective Telescopes with Scanning Mirror. New detector technologies include Linear InGaAs, Area InGaAs, Area Bicolor HgCtTe and Area Microbolotomers. There is a new One-Axis Piezoelectric Actuator mechanism and a new Joule-Thompson with Pressure Vessel cooler.
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.
Project Prediction Infographic
