Category: estimating

  • Putnam’s software equation debunked

    The implementation of a project has a lifecycle that starts and finishes with zero people working on it. Between starting and finishing, the number of staff quickly grows to a peak before slowly declining. In a series of very hard to obtain papers during the early 1960s (chapter 5), Peter Norden created a large project […]

  • Modelling estimate/actual including uncertainty in the estimate

    What is an effective technique for modelling the relationship between the time estimated to implement a task and the actual time taken to implement that task? A regression model is the obvious approach. However, an important assumption made by the commonly used regression techniques is not met by estimate/actual project data The commonly used regression […]