New Cost Society Created By Merger of Two Great Societies
I know only a small portion of the readership has heard of the International Society of Parametric Analysis (ISPA) or the Society of Cost Estimating and Analysis (SCEA) but today an important thing happened with these two groups that could have impacts to a larger audience.
Each of these groups has been dear to my heart… Each has fought to bring respect and rigor to the art and science of cost estimating. Each has given me lifetime achievement awards.
There is no way to adequately thank so many people who put their heart and soul into these two organizations.
And… I believe the merger of these two organizations will ultimately make them stronger. I am so greatful for ISPA promoting and teaching parametrics. My first ISPA meeting was in 1984. I made a lot of friends in nearly 25 years. I believe having the ISPA parametric focus in the new organization will make it stronger.
And SCEA has also brought rigor and respectability to cost estimating and analysis.
Here is their press release:
“To all SCEA and ISPA members,
It is our pleasure to announce that the membership of both SCEA and ISPA have overwhelmingly approved the merger of our two Societies. Both organizations received enough votes to reach a quorum. For ISPA, the vote was 114 in favor and 28 opposed. For SCEA it was 816 in favor and 30 opposed. Thus the affirmative votes easily eclipsed the 2/3 majority necessary for approval.
While we are excited about this important milestone in the development of a stronger professional community, much work remains to be done. Final paperwork must be filed with the State of Virginia to complete the merger process. That will be followed by the first meeting of the Interim Board of Directors on October 20th.
The focus of the Pro Tem Board will be on implementing the details of the merger agreement, planning the first ICEAA Conference in 2013 in New Orleans, and managing the election of the first full ICEAA Board of Directors. In addition, we will continue to provide all of the member and professional services you have come to expect from both ISPA and SCEA. We will be looking to you, as members of this new Association, to help carry the load.
We thank you for the support you have given us as we have worked through this process over the last year. We have had to deal with many issues and the conduct of the Boards and general members of both societies has been exemplary. We know that this has not been easy, but we also know that this merger will greatly benefit our profession. You strong vote of confidence tells us that you share in that belief.
Sincerely,
Paul Marston, SCEA President
Andy Prince, ISPA Chairperson”
We at Galorath look forward to working with ICEAA (not sure the official pronunciation but I am inclined to call it ICE double A) and helping bring their influence to an ever increasing community.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
Software Risk Assessments For Increased Project Success
Galorath has teamed with Don Reifer to offer software risk assessment services. These services identify risks as well as risk mitigation approaches. The slides from a webinar of the topic of software risk assessments are here. We are pleased to help our customers obtain project success by reducing project risks.
Process areas include:
| 1. Program Management |
| 2. Program and Build Planning |
| 3. Configuration Management |
| 4. Systems Engineering |
| 5. Testing and Test Automation |
| 6. Quality Assurance |
| 7. Delivery and Deployment |
| 8. Risk Management |
| 9. Cost & Schedule Controls |
| 10. Metrics and Measurement |
| 11. Earned Value Management |
| 12. Supplier Management |
| 13. Integrated Product Teams |
| 14. Human Resources Management |
| 15. Requirements Management |
| 16. Interface Management |
| 17. Continuous Integration / Agile Methods |
| 18. Special Topics / Security
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Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
Software Size, Estimation, and Risk Management Available on Kindle
My book “Software Sizing, Estimation, and Risk Management: When Performance is Measured Performance Improves” is finally available in a kindle edition in addition to the standard ereader edition.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF)
I am excited that IT business value is being addressed by The Innovation Value Institute (IVI) .
The Innovation Value Institute was co-founded in 2006 by the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) and Intel to help drive the transformation of IT management. Our goal is to create a global gold standard for IT management.
To achieve this goal, the Innovation Management Institute researches, develops, and disseminates empirically proven and industry validated IT best practice through a unique open collaboration between leading academic and industry practitioners. Through its consortium, IVI facilitates a collaborative community of like-minded peers committed to investigating, advancing and disseminating the frameworks, tools and best practices associated with managing IT Value and IT enabled Innovation. IVI is currently focused on extending the development and dissemination of the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF).
Since its inception in 2006, the IT-CMF has been used by a variety of global organizations to solve a range of capability issues.
- IT capability measurement and improvement
- IT organizational design and capability management
- IT business alignment and leadership
- Organization benchmarking and best practice
- IT risk management
- Cloud computing (including services innovation and outsourcing
They have published an IT Capability Maturity Model that is very exciting in clarifying the whole issue of IT as business value. A graphic, copied from their web site follows:
The IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) provides a capability maturity framework for Information technology including:
- Maps IT organizations onto a capability maturity model (33 capabilities within IT management)
- Provides practices, outcomes and metrics to improve capability maturity and consistency of results
- Enables assessment and benchmarking over time
- Encourages roadmaps with measures to improve maturity
- Offers best practice guidelines
- Comprises four macro-capabilities to emphasize their complexity and their importance in managing IT for business value.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
Another Look at the “As a Service” Offerings
Software as a Service (SAAS) Licensed Software applications where they are provided on outside infrastructure.
Desktop as a Service (DAAS) There are at least 5 vendors as of today that are offering DAAS. This means the actual desktop data and processsing is handled outside the user’s PS and in the cloud. The user uses a PC or another device to execute the desktop. This is in some ways similar to a remote desktop connection except the hardware is in the cloud.
Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) This involves using hardware in the cloud as the platform for executing as well as items such as storage in the cloud.
Platform as a Service (PAAS) Infrastructure and hosted software for building software applications. The organization’s developers or outsourced developers produce custom corporate applications on the PAAS.
Blogging as a Service (BAAS) Bloggers providing hopefully useful content on the web that others can access and comment on. Alright, I coined this one myself. But arguably this could fit into the definition of “as a service.”
Others speak of items such as Humans as a Service ( Haas) and many more but I fear these are getting carried away.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
Cloud Computing Will Cause Reallocation of IT Spending
According to Gartner Group: By 2020, the IT resources dedicated to operating IT Infrastructure will plummet from about 70 percent to about 35 per cent of resources, according to the Gartner report, New Skills for the New IT.
THis does not mean IT costs will go down, just that the costs will be reallocated. They also predict that 50 percent of costs will be the cost of cloud computing itself, as discovered by Gartner’s CIO survey.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
Using Trends In Variance To Understand Trends in Risk
I always prefer leading indicators to lagging ones. When our CFO comes in at the end of April, for instance, and tells me how we performed through March I am always interested to know but…
I often say, “What do I do with this information–it is now ancient history.”
The paper “The Canary in the Mineshaft: Key Indicators for success in aerospace and defense programs” discusses trending based on leading indicators:
- Trend in estimated schedule to complete (ETC)… ranges in estimates of time to complete, then Monte Carlo analysis based on the uncertainty
- Trend in net present value (NPV)… Value provided by this program, again based on a range… This factors in the cost to complete, maintenance and ownership costs as well as revenues derived
Their point is if the trend in variance of range estimates of the above items is getting smaller, risk is being reduced and if the trend is getting larger risk is increasing.
They wisely use a definition of risk that equates it to uncertainty rather than discrete risks in this context.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
Typical Agile Development Lifecycle
I ran across this nice graphic of an agile lifecycle produced by Galorath’s David Dewitt. I thought it was clear in its presentation of the lifecycle and how estimation and planning fit in.
I am often surprised when speaking to people who say, “We don’t need estimation or planning any longer because we are agile.” I suppose that may be true for very small projects. But for projects of any significance, it is not enough to tell stakeholders who need to budget and plan for delivered software that we will tell you we are done when we get there. Estimation at the macro level is required so the overall project scope is understood as well as at the lowest levels for developers to commit to their work in a sprint.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
IT Risk Management Through Process, Estimation and Measurement
I had the privilege of presenting “IT Risk Management Through Process, Estimation and Measurement” at the Manila ITMPI conference on the topic of IT risk management. There was a large, savvy audience, eager to further explore this topic. As we have seen in other countries, many don’t look at estimation, planning, measurement, and control as critical processes. Those organizations often have less than successful projects, late, over cost, and with missing functionality. Conversely, those organizations that do spent mind-share on these critical planning and management functions perform much better. Of course not all their projects are successful, but many more are, and they know when things are turning for the worse and can fix them sooner. The three key points of the presentation were.
- Critical IT Systems present significant risks to organizations
- IT estimating processes are core to reducing risk
- IT estimation & metrics can help mitigate risk & empower program managers to be successful
PS: I also got a little R&R in, scuba diving about 100 kilometers outside Manila. Beautiful diving and very unusual dive boats… This is the exact style, but not the actual boat we dove from.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
MOOSE Metric: IT Cost Excluding New IT Investments
MOOSE is defined by Forrester as the spending to Maintain and Operate the IT Organization, Systems, and Equipment (MOOSE) as a percentage of revenues. One of the difficulties of benchmarking overall IT spending is that IT spending may be providing a positive ROI to the business: thus more total IT spending may signify a company is more efficient. Hence being higher or lower than the benchmark can be extremely misleading (higher spending might be a good thing.) MOOSE seems to help solve that problem, quantifying just the costs of operations.
“Since 2005, Forrester has argued that the best IT spending benchmark is not overall IT spending as a percentage of revenue, but rather IT spending on ongoing operations and maintenance relative to revenues — what we have called IT MOOSE. We believe that IT MOOSE as a percentage of revenues is a more accurate and useful benchmark than other commonly used ones, such as IT spending as a percentage of company revenues, IT spending per employee, or IT staff as a percentage of total employees.”
In the financial sector, for example MOOSE in 2007 was around 8.2% with a median of about 5% with MOOSE being abut 66% of IT spend.
In government and public services MOOSE was about 6.8% average and 5% median with MOOSE being about 72% of IT spend.
The MOOSE metric allows organizations to clearly assess “Are we getting more or less efficient over time” (MOOSE going up or down)
The original article covering IT spending may be found at this link.
Thanks also to Frank Vogelezang for pointing out this excellent report.
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
Project Prediction Infographic
