Prioritise your deliverables using MoSCoW
In Agile development methodologies, MoSCoW is not a reference to the city, but rather an acronym used to prioritize and categorize requirements or features. MoSCoW stands for: M – Must have: These are the most critical requirements or features that are essential for the project’s...
What is Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) in Estimation
Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) estimation is a high-level estimation technique used in software development project management to provide a rough idea of the effort, cost, and duration of a project. It is typically done early in the project’s lifecycle when there is limited information...
What should you learn as a Project Manager to be successful?
As a new Project Manager, there are several topics that you should learn to be successful in your role. Some of these topics include: Project planning: This is a no-brainer! A Project Manager needs to learn how to plan, schedule and manage tasks, milestones, and...
Agile estimation using T-Shirt Sizing
High level estimates can be provided using the T-Shirt Sizing Estimation technique. It can be used as an alternative to Planning Poker for estimating Story Points for Agile projects. T-Shirt sizing estimates can still be converted into rough number of days and cost involved. When...
Effort Estimation using Planning Poker
Planning Poker is a consensus-based estimation technique commonly used in Agile Software Development to estimate effort or relative size of user stories. During a planning session, the Product Owner or Customer reads the User Story or describes the feature to the team. Each team member...
Estimation Center of Excellence
There are various techniques to conduct an estimation exercise within an organization, but ensuring consistency at the Enterprise level is very important. This is where an Estimation Center of Excellence (CoE) comes into picture. Just like the Project Management Office, this CoE is a team...
Why do Estimates vary for same scope?
This is a follow-up to the initial article on Software Effort Estimation. We had an interesting feedback from one of our readers in the IT Software Services Industry. The statement was Why do different organizations come up with varied estimates when submitting proposals for the...
Work Breakdown Structure
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) looks at splitting deliverables into smaller components and then sizing each of them thereby providing the Project Manager with a way to provide a reasonable estimate for delivering the project. The PMBOK defines Work Breakdown Structure as a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition...
Software Effort Estimation Techniques
Software effort estimation techniques predict a realistic amount of effort required in terms of time (person-hours or person-days) that would be required to develop or maintain software. The estimate is called so since it is typically based on incomplete inputs (requirements). The estimate is used...