Project Cost Estimation
Estimating how expensive a change or development is, when little is know about it, is a key skill that can make or break an organization. When this is done well, resources are available for the right projects . When done poorly, resources must regularly be shifted around to make up for projects which are under-funded, or resources are wasting time because they are under-deployed.
Development Cost
For development, we can help train your management team to assign metrics to developments at various stages of the development process, and gather performance metrics against those metrics. We advocate having someone assigned to analyze these metrics who is not directly responsible for delivery of the product, so the data is not adversely affected by the desire to make estimates become true. If the proper metrics are put into place, the team performance on average over time will be meaningful and can be used to predict what is likely to occur in the future.
Challenge: A client was regularly over-committed with respect to features to be delivered. The consequence was low quality as the development team continuously thrashed to meet delivery dates with a combination of poorly thought through designs, hastily implemented solutions by junior developers and those with little knowledge of past design decision criteria. Then they again were short of resources post release as they thrashed to defects discovered in the field.
Action: We developed a new system which utilized input from each functional area. In order to make a commitment on a new function, the requirements had to be written down and the appropriate development team would do a first level attempt at functional coverage to meet the requirements and a design to implement those functions. Then estimates were rolled up from each area to ensure nothing was left out.
Result: significant improvement in quality, 50% fewer defects discovered during development from one release to the next, first hot fix six weeks after release instead of days later.