CMMI for Development Case Study: Estimation Accuracy
With a team of highly qualified professionals, DQS Certification India Private Limited, a Delhi Quality Services initiative for Corporate Excellence since 1994, and Authorized Transition Partner with SEI (Software Engineering Institute), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, USA for providing CMMI Assessment and CMMI Training Services, was able to meet the client's expectations. Estimation is one of the most critical factors in the timely and within budget completion of project in organization. A deficiency in the estimation methodology can lead to even project cancellations. The company in this case study was impacted by the budget and time over run and as a result clients of the organization were not happy. Even some clients insisted on the project cancellation. DQS India Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) was contacted by the organization to build an effective and accurate Estimation Methodology. ESTIMATION ACCURACY WITH CMMI® QUALITY FRAMEWORK Industry for the study was a Development Centre for Defense in Turkey - A leading Turkey based Software Development Company supplier to Department of Defense, Government of Turkey, developing for Defense domain. Challenge was to improve the Estimation methodology, so that projects estimation are accurate and does not lead to issues related to budget and schedule over run. Using the CMMI framework, and with a team of highly qualified SMEs, DQS India conducted an initial study of the processes and estimation methodologies used by the organization for project effort estimation and identified the changes that would have a maximum impact to improve the estimation accuracy. During this study DQS SMEs studied the variance in Estimated Effort and the actual efforts of past projects and draw various conclusions. Important factors found during the study were weight-age given to the Personal Experience during the effort estimation and non-alignment of different teams, like Business Development Teams and Technical Teams, for project proposals. Based on these factors various improvements were suggested and were implemented by the client with the help of the DQS India Team. Summary of the changes suggested and incorporated at the organizational and project level were: • Trainings on different Estimation Techniques, like WBS, Delhi and Function Point, were provided to the different teams for better estimation. • Trainings on different Requirements Elicitation Techniques were provided to the Team to improve better Requirements Understanding at the different project stages. • Collaboration was suggested between the Business Development Team and Technical Team align the Estimation and accurate Project Effort estimation. • Use of Project Asset Library for Estimation was strengthened so that past project estimations can be reused. Following benefits were observed: - Quantitative Benefits: 25% improvement in Effort Accuracy was achieved as a result of process improvements activities. - Improved the teams capability to estimate the Project Effort accurately so that projects are delivered on-time and within budgets.
About the Author
DQS Certification India Private Limited, a Delhi Quality Services initiative for Corporate Excellence since 1994 is an Authorized Transition Partner with SEI (Software Engineering Institute), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, USA to provide CMMI® Assessment and Training Services also known as CMMI® Product Suite Services.
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