SEER’s 20th Anniversary and Request for Feedback
Last month marked the 20th anniversary of SEER for Software (SEER-SEM). It was back on the 26th of April 1988 that four of us began development. Some months later our first customer, the United States Air Force Space and Missile Center in Los Angeles signed up for the product. It was twelve years before that, as a young MBA student and software project manager, I first thought about transforming software estimation from an art into an engineering discipline. That first version of SEER-SEM, one of the earliest such applications to be Microsoft Windows-based, consisted of 13 5-1/4 inch floppy discs containing 30,000 lines of code. 12 of these disks were a runtime version of Windows 2.03. That’s a far cry from today’s Version 7.2 which comprises over 200,000 lines!
When word of our unique parametric modeling tool got around, other customers got excited about the Galorath SEER solution. The National Security Agency came in, followed by GTE, and Lockheed. I think that the thing I’m most proud of is that, after two decades, every one of our earliest users is still a Galorath customer.
The reason for the outstanding longevity of our customer relationships is not brand loyalty but pure and simple innovation. SEER-SEM has had 16 major enhancements since 1978. These include the addition of thousands of data points, including an ever-expanding knowledge base and user-friendly features that allow people to size without having to estimate lines of code.
We learned early on that listening to customers and understanding what they liked—and didn’t like—about our product, was the key to producing the best tool in the industry.
But even as we wax nostalgic about our early days, Galorath is looking eagerly and optimistically to the future. We are planning many new enhancements, including a Web-based feature that will enable easier collaboration among users in multiple locations. There are other major improvements in the works as well.
I’ve begun this blog to establish a dialog with the thousands of SEER users who are in over 50 countries around the world. As we envision a SEER-SEM for the next 20 years, what would you like to see?
www.galorath.com
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.
Related posts:
- Why SEER Got Started
- Software Estimating: Sources and Uses of Data and Data Driven Estimates Intro
- Happy 25th Mac
- Lines of Code Versus Functon Points Versus Use Cases For Sizing
- SEER for Software Quick Start: Sizing an Entire Corporate Software Portfolio in Less Than One Week
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Congratulations.