Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art by Steve McConnell

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
The software industry is notorious for its poor estimates. For years, Code Complete's Steve McConnell has been trying to fix that. In Software Estimation, he's brought together all he's learned through teaching thousands of software professionals and building one of the world’s leading software estimation tools. This is the definitive treatment: both formal techniques and crucial "rules of thumb."

McConnell walks through sources of error, reveals common estimating pitfalls, and shows how to improve accuracy by using several methods to refine your projections. You’ll learn how to “decompose” projects into smaller elements (for instance, modules instead of systems); and then recompose those elements into one coherent estimate.

Next, he systematically addresses the challenges of estimating project size, effort, and schedule. Last but not least, you’ll find realistic guidance on presenting estimates to management, and surviving those inevitable, dreaded negotiations. Bill Camarda, from the April 2006 Read Only

From the Publisher

Often referred to as the "black art" because of its complexity and uncertainty, software estimation is not as hard or mysterious as people think. However, the art of how to create effective cost and schedule estimates has not been very well publicized. While the average software organization can struggle with project costs that run double their original estimates, some of the more sophisticated organizations achieve results with estimation errors as low as 5-10%. These best-in-class organizations use scientific techniques that are not cost-effective, however, making them of limited use to most software development organizations. To address these issues, Software Estimation focuses on the art of software estimation and provides a proven set of procedures and heuristics that software developers, technical leads, and project managers can apply to their projects. Instead of arcane treatises and rigid modeling techniques, award-winning author Steve McConnell gives practical guidance to help organizations achieve basic estimation proficiency and lay the groundwork to continue improving project cost estimates. This book is organized from simple tips to more advanced ideas; it does not avoid the more hairy mathematical estimation approaches, but the non-mathematical reader will find plenty of useful guidelines without getting bogged down in complex formulas.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents