Practical IT Project Estimating Techniques

by Ed Yourdon download a PDF brochure

Description

In today's increasingly competitive Business environment, IT organizations continue to be frustrated by their inability to estimate how long it will take to develop and deliver the computer systems that power the company's products and services; similarly, they continue to be frustrated by the difficulty of estimating how much effort, how many people, and what cost will be required to develop these systems. Estimating system development projects is something that every organization much do, over and over again, and it's something that has been going on since IT systems first began being developed some 50 years ago. Yet some companies are 10 times better than other companies in this fundamental activity -- that is, they are ten times more likely to develop realistic estimates of schedule, cost, and resources that they can achieve within a ±10% margin of error.
Successful estimating is usually the result of several discrete practices: good analytical techniques; good Project Management techniques; disciplined calculations; and effective automated tools. This seminar takes the "Best Practices" of all of these areas, based on dozens of examples of successful estimating in many well-known companies, and presents them to seminar delegates in a practical fashion that can be applied as soon as the delegate returns to his office.
The seminar presents a brief overview of several different software-estimation products and tools, but does not specifically recommend or endorse any of them. The seminar presenter (Edward Yourdon) has no Business relationship with the vendors of any of these products.

Main Topics

• What software estimating is all about
• Estimates based on project size and complexity
• Estimates based on productivity
• Errors and inaccuracy in estimating
• Problems with estimating - and how to solve them
• Estimating techniques with fuzzy requirements
• Estimating tradeoffs
• Estimating tools