Galorath / DCG IT Estimation For Business Value and Project Success Clinic

Here are the slides from the Galorath / David Consulting Group estimating clinic  held in New York City. There were interesting discussions encompassing dealing with impossible demands, understanding risk and risk management, sizing, and a number of other topics.  Note: The Galorath slides and the DCG slides are combined in the one PDF file.

Concepts of IT providing business value to the organization were also discussed in detail.

Thanks to all who attended and especially to Mike Harris and David Herren for their insights.

Experiences Implementing and Managing a Project Office

ITMPI produces valuable content covering software and IT.  They have just released a series of articles on setting up and managing a project office.

According to Wikipedia: The Project Management Office (PMO) in a business or professional enterprise is the department or group that:

• Defines and maintains the standards of process, generally related to project management, within the organization
• Strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects
• Is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution

Sam Schroeder, PMP, outlines experiences with implementating and managing a project office.

Kathy Hood describes setting up a project office from scratch.

Mariya Breyter, PMP, experiences implementing a PMO at a global company

Engagement Level and Impact on Productivity

People are the most important asset in an engineering environment.  SEER models the productivity of teams well.

And drilling down,  there is a way to look at individual productivity based on how “into” their job they are.  People that are disengaged have about 45% less individual productivity than those that are nominally engaged in the job.  Worse yet, only about 1 in 10 disengaged people can ever get the the engaged level.

It is possible to improve the level of engagement with some employees, some of the time.  We will be briefing more detail on this at our New York event this week and and plan on offering help in evaluating employee engagement as well as what can be done to improve engagement in the near future.

C language inventor dies

I just heard this… Another great man in computing passed away..

While the popular and other press has been pre-occupied with the death of Steve Jobs, they have, except in some of the specialist spaces, largely ignored Dennis Ritchie, who died on October 9th. Dennis, who spent his entire career at Bell Labs, was responsible for both C and UNIX.

Link to http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ Dennis home page is a wonderful tribute to the man, with links to significant writing (usually written very elegantly) and other things, including other Dennis Ritchies.

The Future of Software Analysis and Measurement : Expert Panel Questions & Answers

Here are some of the questions that were answered after the webinar with Bill Curtis, David Herron, and Dan Galorath.  They were answered on Cast software’s Facebook page.

What about aerospace component level software and how would you apply a cost factor their  complexity factors?

What is IFPUG Back Fired Points, how does it help?

Daniel Galorath Backfiring  means counting lines of code then using a number of lines per function point to approximate function points.  I think it is much better than nothing for a finger in the wind.  Many others in the industry object strongly to it.

Another question – What type of information is needed to start using a software analysis and measurement tool?

Bill Curtis First  you need to know how you want to use the results.  That will help you establish criteria for evaluating which of the various tools best meets your needs.  The Goal-Question-Metric paradigm is a good guide for determining what your measurement needs are.

Here’s  another question from the webinar – Would like to understand how we can  improve our ability to capture metrics (defect density either using effective loc and or functional point) for applications that rely heavily on database’s where the logic resides – e.g to map biz rules existing in table rows/columns etc?

Daniel Galorath Generally  you would count the work involved in building the database, not the entry of the data into the database itself. SEER will provide estimates of defect density, etc.  From my understanding CAST can provide measurement of this.

What  is the panel’s opinion on LLOC to FP translation such as QSM language by language table which they developed from their database.

Do you have to have a technology inventory?

How do you extend the IT governance to software suppliers? what requirements to pose to them?

Bill Curtis Customers are starting to write measurable quality targets such as robustness or security targets into their outsourcing contracts as the equivalent of service level agreements. They then establish a Quality Gate where all software received is measured and evaluated before being put in operation. If the supplier’s software falls below the quality target they must remediate the code or face a financial penalty.

C Language Usage Appears To Be Overtaking Java Again

From Computer World Magazine: Java is losing popularity based on the latest assessment of programming languages by Tiobe Software.

The October edition of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, found that Java lost popularity in September, with an estimated 17.9 percent of developers using it as opposed to 18.8 percent in the previous month’s index.

Java still finished as the top language, but if the downward trend continues, the C language, ranked second with 17.7 percent of users, will be No.1 next month.

Good think I still have my Kernighan & Richie book on C… Vintage around 1976?

Douglas Hubbard on Pushing The Boundary In Risk Management

If you follow my ramblings you know I am a big fan of Douglas Hubbard’s work on risk management and especially his book, “How to Measure Anything.”   He is currently offering a white paper covering “Pushing The Boundary:  Risk Management Beyond Insurance”

From the white paper’s foreword:

1. Uncertainty can be assessed and measured, Even With Unknown Unknowns…if the object of measurement is well defined.  “Even when faced with the perfect unknown unknowns, scenario analyses will frame the problem and help to reduce uncertainty.”

2. Establish early warning systems. Risk radars must be built into systems for continuous scanning. SEER-SEM’s monitoring and control is an example of early warning.

3. Prudent forecasting is possible and necessary. My favorite  estimates (forecasts) are  essential to reduce uncertainty. Forecasting should assume simple trends can’t be relied upon and that specifics should be identified and forecasted. “It is a first step toward mitigating the risk of being surprised by unknown unknowns, or the now proverbial black swan.”

4. Contingency planning is indispensable. “Since unknown unknowns keep generating surprises it is important to develop contingency plans that cover a whole range of scenarios.”

5. Resilience buffers will dilute adverse impacts. “Even the best risk assessment and most efficient forecasting cannot protect against the adverse impact of uncertainty. The challenge for risk managers will be to transfer the idea of resilience buffers to other areas in order to mitigate the adverse impacts of uncertainty.”

DoD Historical Top Line Spending

I thought this was interesting.. Showing the total spend from the US Department of Defense over time and how it correlates with lower conflicts.

APMP Cost Task Force: Improving Cost as Part of Proposals to Government

I have recently accepted the chair position with  Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) cost task force.  I will be starting up the regular telecons in a few weeks.  I must admit when I was first drafted onto this task force a couple years ago I had never heard of APMP.  But having worked with them and attended their last two conferences I must say I am very impressed with the organization.

For those already on the task force I will be contacting you in the next few days.  For those that would like to help improve the ability for costs to reflect actuals please send me an email and get on this task force.

The charter of this task force follows:

1. 1. Statement of the Issue.

There are often large differences between an offeror’s proposed cost and the Government’s realistic or Most Probable Cost. This task force will involve Government and Industry Cost experts to discuss/brainstorm possible reasons.  It may require discussing or mapping each other’s processes to determine where these disconnects may be.

1. 2. Goal of the Task Force Effort.

• To identify disconnects between offerors’ approaches in developing cost proposals and the Government’s approach to evaluating cost proposals (including performing realism analysis and developing Most Probable Cost).

• To minimize differences between the proposed cost and the Government’s Most Probable Cost that is due analysis approach differences (e.g., Government point estimate or a 50% probability approach vs. an offeror’s 10% best case approach.)

The Future of Software Analysis Measurement Webinar Featuring Bill Curtis, David Herron and Dan Galorath

We have some exciting events coming up this month with the first: The Future of Software Analysis and Measurement on October 12, 2011. I am really excited to share the virtual podium with Bill Curtis, Senior VP and Chief Scientist of CAST Corporation and with David Herron, David Consulting Groups VP of Knowledge Solution Services as moderator.

Bill and I both spoke at a software engineering conference last year and I got very excited about his work in software analysis with CAST. Besides Bill being an engaging speaker his content was very illuminating, covering issues of existing software, its complexity and reliability. He ev!–more–
en showed the number of latent defects in software of various languages. I have greatly summarized some of the a href=http://www.galorath.com/wp/software-defects-in-fielded-software-cast-analysis.phpsoftware defect conclusions /aelsewhere on this BLOG and CAST has been instrumental in recognizing and quantifying the a href=http://www.galorath.com/wp/500-billion-it-debt-for-deferred-maintenance.phptechnical debt/a

And with David Herron, one of the most knowledgeable people in the measurement community, this should be a do not miss event.

Details of the event follow as does a link to signup. Hope you can make it.
blockquotestrongThe Future of Software Analysis and Measurement/strong

October 12, 2011 8:00am Pacific, 11:00am Eastern, 4:00pm London

a href=http://www.castsoftware.com/news-events/event/future-of-sam?gad=glrClick this Webinar Link to sign up/a

Join us on October 12th to hear from an exciting lineup of experts on the Future of Software Analysis and Measurement: Dan Galorath, President CEO of Galorath Inc and Bill Curtis, SVP Chief Scientist, CAST will have an engaging discussion moderated by David Herron, VP, Knowledge Solution Services, David Consulting Group.

These industry veterans will share experiences with their client’s software development processes and discuss how Software Analysis and Measurement tools coupled with Parametric Estimation models can impact organizational performance through increased ROI, customer satisfaction and business value.

The panel will provide insightful and actionable steps that will make an immediate impact on your strategy including how to:

• Drive organization value by fueling Estimate and Measurement practices within an enterprise

• Build the funding rationale through proven economic impact models

• Establish the ROI from Estimate and Measurement practices and process/blockquote

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