“As projects get more complicated, managers stop learning from their - perience. It is important to understand how that happens and how to change it…. Fallible estimates: In software development, initial estimates for a project shape the trajectory of decisions that a manager makes over its life. For ex- ple, estimates of the productivity of the team members influence decisions about the size of the team, which in turn affect the team’s actual output. The trouble is that initial estimates usually turn out to be wrong. ” (Sengupta, 2008) This book aims directly to increase the awareness among managers and practitioners that estimation is as important as the work to be done in so- ware and systems development. You can manage what you can measure! Readers will find in this book a collection of lessons learned from the worldwide “metrics community,” which we have documented and enhanced with our own experiences in the field of software measurement and estimating. Our goal is to support our readers to harvest the benefits of estimating and - prove their software development processes. We present the 5 ISO/I- acknowledged Functional Sizing Methods with variants, experiences, counting rules, and case studies – and most importantly, illustrate through practical - amples how to use functional size measurement to produce realistic estimates. The book is written in a practical manner, especially for the busy practitioner community. It is aimed to be used as a manual and an assistant for everyday work.
"This is a most useful and practical book. It should be on every project manager's desk as a handy reference on all things dealing with software measurement, estimation, benchmarking, and process improvement. Easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to apply !"
Peter R. Hill, CEO, International Software Benchmarking Standards Group
"Carol Dekkers and Manfred Bundschuh have written an excellent book that should be added to the collections of all software managers and software metrics workers throughout the world.
Measurement and estimation of software projects has been extremely difficult for both technical and sociological reasons. The technical reasons include scores of poorly defined and incompatible metrics, gaps or "leakage" from historical data, and a rather sparse collection of accurate benchmarks that were available to the general software community.
The sociological reasons center around the adversarial relationships between followers of rival metrics and measurement practices. For many years the "lines of code" metrics users have been at odds with the "function point" metrics users. Several other forms of measurement such as Earned Value, Balanced Scorecards, and Goal-Question metrics also have supporters, and tend to ignore other forms of metrics.
In recent years the situation has become even more complex. As of 2008 there are at least 24 function point variants, five methods for counting lines of code, and perhaps 15 other forms of measurement such as Use Case Points, Story Points, object-oriented metrics, and others too numerous to cite.
Dekkers and Bundschuh navigate this tricky area with clarity and objectiveness. All of the major metrics variants are discussed and explained, and their pros and cons are noted.
The book also discusses the organizations that are trying to eliminate competition among the rival metrics camps, and achieve some kind of consensus on what needs to be measured and how to go about it. Although there is still antagonism among the various rivals, this new book by Dekkers and Bundschuh is likely to be useful in leading to common goals and mutual understanding of what the various metrics were trying to accomplish.
Prior to the publication of this book, there was no easy way for followers of various metrics to learn about the other possibilities. While there are many books that discuss IFPUG function points, COSMIC function points, Goal-Question metrics, Balanced Scorecards, and all the others, this is the first book to try and show all of the major metrics in one volume.
This new book is a worthy companion to older books such as Barry Boehm's Software Engineering Economics, Steve McConnell's Software Estimation, Richard Stutzke's Estimating Software-Intensive Systems, Roger Pressman's Software Engineering - A Practitioner's Approach, Steve Kan's Metrics and Models in Software Engineering, and my own books Estimating Software Costs and Applied Software Measurement. All of these books attempt to show the synergistic relationships among wide-ranging topics, as does this new book by Dekkers and Bundschuh."
Capers Jones, Chief Scientist Emeritus, Software Productivity Research LLC
Peter R. Hill, CEO, International Software Benchmarking Standards Group
"Carol Dekkers and Manfred Bundschuh have written an excellent book that should be added to the collections of all software managers and software metrics workers throughout the world.
Measurement and estimation of software projects has been extremely difficult for both technical and sociological reasons. The technical reasons include scores of poorly defined and incompatible metrics, gaps or "leakage" from historical data, and a rather sparse collection of accurate benchmarks that were available to the general software community.
The sociological reasons center around the adversarial relationships between followers of rival metrics and measurement practices. For many years the "lines of code" metrics users have been at odds with the "function point" metrics users. Several other forms of measurement such as Earned Value, Balanced Scorecards, and Goal-Question metrics also have supporters, and tend to ignore other forms of metrics.
In recent years the situation has become even more complex. As of 2008 there are at least 24 function point variants, five methods for counting lines of code, and perhaps 15 other forms of measurement such as Use Case Points, Story Points, object-oriented metrics, and others too numerous to cite.
Dekkers and Bundschuh navigate this tricky area with clarity and objectiveness. All of the major metrics variants are discussed and explained, and their pros and cons are noted.
The book also discusses the organizations that are trying to eliminate competition among the rival metrics camps, and achieve some kind of consensus on what needs to be measured and how to go about it. Although there is still antagonism among the various rivals, this new book by Dekkers and Bundschuh is likely to be useful in leading to common goals and mutual understanding of what the various metrics were trying to accomplish.
Prior to the publication of this book, there was no easy way for followers of various metrics to learn about the other possibilities. While there are many books that discuss IFPUG function points, COSMIC function points, Goal-Question metrics, Balanced Scorecards, and all the others, this is the first book to try and show all of the major metrics in one volume.
This new book is a worthy companion to older books such as Barry Boehm's Software Engineering Economics, Steve McConnell's Software Estimation, Richard Stutzke's Estimating Software-Intensive Systems, Roger Pressman's Software Engineering - A Practitioner's Approach, Steve Kan's Metrics and Models in Software Engineering, and my own books Estimating Software Costs and Applied Software Measurement. All of these books attempt to show the synergistic relationships among wide-ranging topics, as does this new book by Dekkers and Bundschuh."
Capers Jones, Chief Scientist Emeritus, Software Productivity Research LLC
Aus den Rezensionen: "... ein umfangreiches Werk ... Wer sich die Mühe macht, das Buch durchzuarbeiten, wird mit Sicherheit viele Perlen entdecken ... Besonders beeindruckt haben mich die Ausführungen zur Einführung eines Schätzprozesses in einer Organisation. ... Auch finden sich zahlreiche interessante Hinweise auf Frühwarnindikatoren, Produktivitätsmessungen und CMMI ... wer Anregungen für ein besseres Management seiner IT-Projekte sucht, dem sei dieses Buch, das man freilich nicht an einem verregneten Sonntagnachmittag durchblättern kann, dringend empfohlen." (Heinz Schelle, in: projekt MANAGEMENT, 2009, Vol. 20, Issue 3, S. 42)