Estimating the “value” of features is a waste of time. I was in a JAD session once where people argued about if the annoying beeping (audible on the conference line) was a smoke alarm or a fire alarm. Yes, you can get to an answer, but so what?! The important thing is to solve the problem.
Tag Archives: estimation
SRS Plan of Attack
How do you approach starting a small requirements project as part of a large initiative within a massive enterprise? Do you boil the ocean? Your customer knows she needs “requirements” to give to her development team. She asks you – what will you deliver, and how long will it take? Great questions. If you have to write a statement of work, with time/cost estimates, and a list of deliverables – what would you do?
Posted in Business Analysis, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Requirements gathering, Software requirements specification
Tagged actor hierarchy, brd, enterprise requirements, enterprise software requirements, estimation, managing data, scoping, software requirements specification, SRS
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Estimating an Inestimable Project
We create cost estimates at many times in a project. From budgetary estimates at the start of a project all the way to PERT estimates of tasks in a work breakdown structure. Creating a budgetary estimate seems impossible – you have to make many assumptions, your estimates are based on the unknown – they can’t be good. There are ways to make budgetary estimates easier to generate and refine – but they can create a sense of false precision.
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Crossing The Desert With Bad Project Planning
Johanna Rothman recently wrote an article with a poignant introduction: “A project team focuses on an interim milestone, works like the devil to meet that milestone. They meet the milestone, look up, and realize they’re not at the end of the project–they still have to finish the darn thing. They’re living the Crossing the Desert syndrome.” Fixing it isn’t enough – how do we prevent it from happening?
Posted in Agile, Communication, Process Improvement, Project Management, Software development, Testing
Tagged CMMI, continuous integration, effort allocation, estimation, incremental delivery, iterative development, managing data, pm, scheduling, scope creep, testable requirements, timeboxing, use cases, verifiable requirements, writing requirements
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Estimating the Effort of Documenting an As-Is Process
Estimating the gathering of requirements is hard. Not as hard as scheduling innovation, but easier than estimating implementation effort. One step in gathering requirements is often the documentation of the “as-is” process – how things exist today. We provide a framework for building those estimates – making the job a little bit easier.
Posted in Business Analysis, Requirements, Requirements gathering
Tagged as-is, as-is documentation, as-is process, documenting as-is, documenting as-is processing, documenting processes, eliciting requirements, estimating, estimating requirements, estimating requirements gathering, estimation, gathering requirements, managing data, process documentation, requirements elicitation, Requirements gathering
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Joel Spolsky Speaks Specs
It seems that specs are like flossing: everybody knows they should be writing them, but nobody does.
Another for the wish I had said that list. Joel Sposky wrote a four part series on writing functional specifications in Oct 2000. Joel’s opening position is that all projects lasting more than a week, or with more than one developer, will be completed faster with specs than without them. He presents three giant reasons to use a requirements document as part of developing software
Three Giant Reasons
Posted in Requirements, Software requirements specification
Tagged creating time boxes, estimation, FDD, feature driven development, FRS, functional requirements, functional requirements specification, joel sposky, managing data, project estimates, software estimation, software requirements specification, SRS, timeboxes
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Foundation Series: Basic PERT Estimate Tutorial
PERT is a technique for providing definitive estimates of how long it will take to complete tasks. We often estimate, or scope, the amount of time it will take us to complete a task or tasks. PERT allows us to provide not only an estimate, but a measure of how good the estimate is. Good estimates are a critical element in any software planning strategy. In this post, we will present an introduction to using PERT, explain how it works and how to interpret PERT estimates.
Posted in Consulting, Foundation series, Process Improvement, Project Management, Software development
Tagged estimating, estimation, Foundation series, managing data, pert, pert analysis, pert analysis estimates, pert duration estimates, pert estimate, pert estimating, pert estimation, planning, project management pert
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