I've spent a good part of the day traveling, and that means reading and... thinking. I re-read, after a few years, two chapters of a nice book from Gerald Weinberg, one of my favorite authors. He has a unique perspective on software projects management, and looking at his concept of Standard Task Unit got me thinking about using Activity Diagrams (and colors) as a project management tool. It would need some scripting to generate a Gantt, but besides that, STU maps perfectly into activities, including the entry/exit criteria.
More on PM tools, including Slip/Lead charts, project history, real support for [probabilistic] estimates, and maybe just a little Monte Carlo simulations... later :-).
Well, it's late, no time to talk about Edward de Bono and, on a completely unrelated topic, on the Big Question of the day...

Labels: project management

Today I've been playing again with custom estimation models for software development. Custom models are derived from historical customer's data, and can accurately reflect the peculiarites of the customer's environment.
The model I'm working with is tailored to estimate debugging time given the coding time and 5 boolean properties of the project (e.g. new developments Vs. maintenance). The properties have been selected for their statistical significance for a specific customer.
Reflecting my approach to estimates and risk management (I'll write more on that) the model provides a "most likely" figure, but also a probability distribution, so that you can ask questions like "what is the maximum debug time, with 90% confidence?".
Of course, given an early estimate of coding time, we can apply the model and get back a rough estimate of debugging time, still quite useful as a sanity check. We can also play what-if scenarios with the boolean properties, see the impact (for those under control) and steer the project accordingly.

Labels: estimation, project management