e-Book.LT

Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art

November 22nd, 2006

Author(s): Steve McConnell Publisher: Microsoft Press Year/edition: 2006 ISBN: 0735605351 Language: English File size: 4.97 MB

Unlike other books that focus exclusively on the science of estimation—including rigid modeling techniques and continuous feedback loops that are not cost effective to most organizations—this unique guide offers practical, tested, hands-on advice for estimating software development costs in the real world. It is written by the award-winning author of Code Complete.

Often referred to as the “black art” because of its complexity and uncertainty, software estimation is not as hard or mysterious as people think. However, the art of how to create effective cost and schedule estimates has not been very well publicized. While the average software organization can struggle with project costs that run double their original estimates, some of the more sophisticated organizations achieve results with estimation errors as low as 5-10%. These best-in-class organizations use scientific techniques that are not cost-effective, however, making them of limited use to most software development organizations. To address these issues, Software Estimation focuses on the art of software estimation and provides a proven set of procedures and heuristics that software developers, technical leads, and project managers can apply to their projects. Instead of arcane treatises and rigid modeling techniques, award-winning author Steve McConnell gives practical guidance to help organizations achieve basic estimation proficiency and lay the groundwork to continue improving project cost estimates. This book is organized from simple tips to more advanced ideas; it does not avoid the more hairy mathematical estimation approaches, but the non-mathematical reader will find plenty of useful guidelines without getting bogged down in complex formulas.

The book is divided into three parts: estimation concepts, techniques, and challenges respectively. The first part of the book, on concepts, is just a broad overview designed to convince the software engineer of the value of estimation and how, done incorrectly, it can mess up what would have been a successful project. The second part, on techniques, is the meatiest part of the book. Here the author combines tried and true computational techniques with your own judgement and reminds you to get the expert opinion of other people too when estimating a project. Finally, the third and last part of the book, on challenges, talks about how you must think “out of the box” when you confront a software project whose size, effort, and schedule may be hard to quantify completely. Finally, McConnell points out the importance of politics and group dynamics in general in estimation. This is important, as many software engineers and project managers tend to be lone wolves that want to go off in a corner and solve problems by themselves. I highly recommend this book to all software engineers and particularly to software project managers. Amazon does not show the table of contents, so I do that here:
CRITICAL ESTIMATION CONCEPTS
1 What is an “estimate”? 3
2 How good an estimator are you? 15
3 Value of accurate estimates 21
4 Where does estimation error come from? 33
5 Estimate influences 55
FUNDAMENTAL ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES
6 Introduction to estimation techniques 77
7 Count, compute, judge 83
8 Calibration and historical data 91
9 Individual expert judgment 105
10 Decomposition and recomposition 113
11 Estimation by analogy 127
12 Proxy-based estimates 135
13 Expert judgment in groups 149
14 Software estimation tools 157
15 Use of multiple approaches 165
16 Flow of software estimates on a well-estimated project 171
SPECIFIC ESTIMATION CHALLENGES
17 Standardized estimation procedures 181
18 Special issues in estimating size 197
19 Special issues in estimating effort 207
20 Special issues in estimating schedule 221
21 Estimating planning parameters 233
22 Estimate presentation styles 249
23 Politics, negotiation, and problem solving 259
A Estimation Sanity Check 271
B Answers to Chapter 2 Quiz, “How Good an Estimator Are You?” 273
C Software Estimation Tips 275

Entry Filed under: Software development