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This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Read Chapter 3: Estimation PDF From chapter 1, page 1: Say a project that started out as a small, stopgap utility has turned into a raging behemoth, sucking seemingly unlimited time from your programmers. Back cover copy: What makes software projects succeed? Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. This is usually done in several steps:.
It should also include estimates and project schedule, including any revisions that were made during the review meetings. Chapter 3 contains a repeatable process for generating a WBS and estimates. Chapter 4 describes how to create a project schedule. A risk plan is a list of all risks that threaten the project, along with a plan to mitigate some or all of those risks.
Some people say that uncertainty is the enemy of planning. If there were no uncertainty, then every project plan would be accurate and every project would go off without a hitch. Unfortunately, real life intervenes, usually at the most inconvenient times.
The risk plan is an insurance policy against uncertainty. To someone who has never estimated a project in a structured way, estimation seems little more than attempting to predict the future.
This view is reinforced when off-the-cuff estimates are inaccurate and projects come in late. But a good formal estimation process, one that allows the project team to reach a consensus on the estimates, can improve the accuracy of those estimates, making it much more likely that projects will come in on time.
Wideband Delphi is an estimation process process that is straightforward to implement. Using it, a project manager can help the team to create successful estimates for any software project by using sound techniques and understanding what makes estimates more accurate.
The Wideband Delphi estimation method was developed in the s at the Rand Corporation as a forecasting tool. It has since been adapted across many industries to estimate many kinds of tasks, ranging from statistical data collection results to sales and marketing forecasts. It has proven to be a very effective estimation tool, and it lends itself well to software projects. To use Wideband Delphi, the project manager selects a moderator and an estimation team with three to seven members.
The Delphi process consists of two meetings run by the moderator. The first meeting is the kickoff meeting, during which the estimation team creates a WBS and discusses assumptions.
After the meeting, each team member creates an effort estimate for each task. The second meeting is the estimation session, in which the team revises the estimates as a group and achieves consensus. After the estimation session, the project manager summarizes the results and reviews them with the team, at which point they are ready to be used as the basis for planning the software project.
After the kickoff meeting, the moderator writes down all of the assumptions and tasks that were generated by the team during the kickoff meeting and distributes them to the estimation team. Each team member independently generates a set of preparation results, a document which contains an estimate for each of the tasks, any assumptions that the team member made in order to create the estimates and any additional tasks which should be included in the WBS but which the team missed during the kickoff meeting.
The figure below shows the format of the individual preparation results. Each team member builds preparation results by first filling in the tasks, and then estimating the effort for each task.
The estimation session starts with each estimator filling out an estimation form. Blank estimation forms should be handed out to meeting participants, who fill in the tasks and their initial estimates from their individual preparations. During the estimation session, the team members will use these estimation forms to modify their estimates. The estimates are tabulated on a whiteboard by plotting the totals on a line see Figure The forms are returned to the estimators.
Any new or changed tasks, discovered assumptions or questions are raised. Specific estimate times are not discussed. Since individual estimate times are not discussed, these disagreements are usually about the tasks themselves, and are often resolved by adding assumptions.
When an issue is resolved, team members should write clarifications and changes to the task list on their estimation forms. This usually takes about 40 minutes for the first round, and 20 minutes for the following rounds.
They write the new total at the bottom of the sheet. This cycle repeats until either all estimators agree that the range is acceptable, the estimators feel they do not need to change their estimates, or two hours have elapsed. The project schedule is the core of the project plan. It is used by the project manager to commit people to the project and show the organization how the work will be performed.
Schedules are used to communicate final deadlines and, in some cases, to determine resource needs. They are also used as a kind of checklist to make sure that every task necessary is performed. If a task is on the schedule, the team is committed to doing it. In other words, the project schedule is the means by which the project manager brings the team and the project under control.
The project schedule is a calendar that links the tasks to be done with the resources that will do them. Before a project schedule can be created, the project manager must have a work breakdown structure WBS , an effort estimate for each task, and a resource list with availability for each resource. If these are not yet available, it may be possible to create something that looks like a schedule, but it will essentially be a work of fiction.
The reason for this is that a schedule itself is an estimate: each date in the schedule is estimated, and if those dates do not have the buy-in of the people who are going to do the work, the schedule will almost certainly be inaccurate.
There are many project scheduling software products which can do much of the tedious work of calculating the schedule automatically, and plenty of books and tutorials dedicated to teaching people how to use them.
However, before a project manager can use these tools, he should understand the concepts behind the WBS, dependencies, resource allocation, critical paths, Gantt charts and earned value. These are the real keys to planning a successful project. The most popular tool for creating a project schedule is Microsoft Project.
There are also free and open source project scheduling tools available for most platforms which feature task lists, resource allocation, predecessors and Gantt charts. The first step in building the project schedule is to identify the resources required to perform each of the tasks required to complete the project. Generating project tasks is explained in more detail in the Wideband Delphi Estimation Process page.
A resource is any person, item, tool, or service that is needed by the project that is either scarce or has limited availability. The project could include computer resources like shared computer room, mainframe, or server time , locations training rooms, temporary office space , services like time from contractors, trainers, or a support team , and special equipment that will be temporarily acquired for the project.
One or more resources must be allocated to each task. To do this, the project manager must first assign the task to people who will perform it. For each task, the project manager must identify one or more people on the resource list capable of doing that task and assign it to them.
Once a task is assigned, the team member who is performing it is not available for other tasks until the assigned task is completed. By understanding the most common ways that people respond to change and learning how to convince or reassure the ones who are resistant to change, it is possible to overcome these obstacles and successfully make the changes that your organization needs.
This lecture corresponds to Chapter 9. Abstract: In a sense, part of the job of the project manager is to serve as an information conduit. The project manager helps information flow from the team up to senior management in the form of project status and analysis information.
It is his job to understand all of the work being done, so that it can be summarized to the people who make the decisions about the future of the project; they need this information to make informed and intelligent decisions. This requires that the project manager put a lot of effort into understanding what it is the team is doing and why they are doing it.
He must understand what actions each team member is taking to complete the task, and what possible complications they are running into. The project manager is the only person looking at how the tasks interrelate; he is the only one with the perspective to see the problems and, ideally, fix them.
This lecture corresponds to Chapter Abstract: Managing projects is hard. When you hire a company outside your organization to build your software, you open up yourself, your project, and your organization to exactly these problems. A software process makes sure that everyone on the team agrees up front on how they will build software, while simultaneously ensuring that the software will be built in a way that works for the team and the organization.
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