Project Effort Estimation - Key pointers
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The document discusses key points to consider when performing effort estimation for software development projects. It emphasizes that systematic effort estimation is important for project managers to understand, and that relying only on experience and intuition is not sufficient. Having clear requirements, past project data, well-defined size metrics, documented assumptions, and periodically revising estimates are some of the important factors mentioned for making the estimation process meaningful, useful, and repeatable.
Project Effort Estimation - Key pointers
- 1. Channaveer Patil – patilmoto@yahoo.com Key pointers to keep in mind while performing Effort Estimation for a Software System / Applications Development Projects Motivation: It is observed that many Project Managers in multiple Organizations have challenges in understanding and appreciating importance of systematic Effort Estimation Many assume that, based on individuals experience and gut feel to arrive at required effort is good enough. There is never focus on repeatability and strengthening the estimation process/model There is a common belief that only Fixed Price Projects must worry about proper and accurate estimation, it is true to a greater extent, but, never know when your T&M (Time and Material) project will be transitioned to Fixed Price project Proper Estimation and Monitoring actual will help projects to develop confidence and certainty of delivery Following keep pointes are to make estimation meaningful, useful and repeatable process. 1. Do we have clear idea about what are we going to create/develop in the process of delivering this project successfully? 2. Do we have past data for overall productivity along with context information (clarity of requirements / requirements volatility, design complexity, code complexity, test intensiveness, skill level of the project team etc..) 3. What is a meaningful size parameter? a. Number of Lines of code b. Number of Function points c. Number of Feature points d. Number of Use cases e. Number of Story points f. Number of work packages at appropriate granularity 4. Are we aware of set of assumptions and dependencies based on which this estimation is being performed? 5. Does this current project have any similarity to any of our past projects? 6. Can we use past productivity numbers as it is? Or do we need some multipliers to accommodate change in the context? 7. Are we relooking / revising our original estimate at appropriate frequency (Monthly / End of phase/Major CR etc..)? To make it current and update the estimation model itself if needed.