"Spring School 2005: Estimating"

Event Report

With large-scale project failures continuing to make headlines, estimating is a topic which crosses every software professional’s path many times during a career. Estimating was the topic of this year’s Spring School at Bristol, which has become a regular event held jointly by BCS Bristol Branch, and PROMS-G (the BCS project management special interest group).

As before, the School consisted of four evening sessions held on consecutive Tuesdays, from 22nd February to 15th March. The first talk, an “Introduction to Estimating Techniques”, was given by Don Southey of Computacenter plc. This was largely a revision of the basics of estimating, with some key tips on tackling the frequent problems of the commercial environment, such as tendering to a deadline. The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the exercise “How long is a piece of string ?”, prepared by Ian Birch (a former PROMS-G chairman). This graphically demonstrated some relative merits of the top-down and bottom-up approaches.

The second talk was by David Dunning of Corporate Product Solutions, and looked at software packages that aid the estimating process. How and when in the lifecycle to use such tools for best effect was discussed. The presentation included some quite detailed views of work with spreadsheets to demonstrate the points.

The third talk was a two-man effort, by Nigel Minett and Mark Reilly. In a lively and interesting talk, techniques used within Oracle for package implementation estimates were described, along with their tips for avoiding common pitfalls, and the value of multiple approaches and successive refinement (echoing session 1).

In the final lecture of the series, Grant Rule of Software Measurement Systems commended to us the value of size measures for software development estimation. The basics of “delivering value” were analysed and addressed, and “shovelling sugar” memorably taken as our example to work through. The Toyota principle of ‘every step must add value’ was also highlighted.

While the numbers attending were not large, the general consensus was that the series was well worth both the fees and the commitment of an evening a week. A topic that could have been ‘as dry as dust’ was in fact turned into an interesting and informative School series. More regional Schools are planned for the future; those who attended this one will need no prompting to watch the websites for details!