Project managers often track project schedules and milestones as a mechanism for managing the project and detecting risk. The monitoring is usually at a task level of detail and often quite labor intensive. As it turns out, there is another mechanism for monitoring project state. While it�s not at the finely grained level of detail as the individual task, it does provide wonderful insight into the nuance of a project.
You see projects have a tempo to their development that is usually consistent over time and that can be represented graphically by plotting cumulative effort vs. time. The tempo usually takes the form of an S Curve which represents the normal ramping of a project.
S Curves Defined
An S Curve is a graphical display of cumulative cost, value, labor hours or in our case Active Time vs. time. The name derives from the S like shape of the curve, flatter at the beginning and end and steeper in the middle, which is typical of most software projects. The beginning represents the typical slow, methodical start to projects, as the team sorts through the work and determines how to approach the project. The end represents a deceleration as the work runs out and the middle is the acceleration period as the team attacks the work.
Other Terminology
Often S Curves are used to determine project variance according to a plan. In this case, a Baseline S Curve is established from the initial project plan, for example for hours. As the project continues, natural changes occur. These are then mapped as the Target S Curve, which represents all new, approved work beyond the initial baseline. Finally, the Actual S Curve is graphed cumulatively in real-time for the project. The comparative differences between the 3 curves, Baseline, Target, and Actual can shed interesting details on progress and challenges within your project.
Figure 1, provides an example of these curves. In this example, the curves illustrate growth in Baseline to Target�in other words, expansion of the originally planned scope.
figure 1
Tracking Progress
While analyzing Baseline S Curves can be interesting, the real value comes from comparing Actual against your expected Target S Curves. Target in this case can be assumed to be your planned level of progress.
Comparison of the Target S Curve and Actual S Curve reveals the relative progress of the project over time. In most cases, the Actual S Curve will sit below the Target S Curve for the majority of the project. Towards the end of the project the curves should converge and meet. If the project is ahead of schedule, the Actual S Curve will rise above the Target S Curve. However, the Actual S Curve can never finish above the Target S Curve.
figure 2
Acknowledgements
The 2 graphs in this post were references from Midori Media which produces an S Curve graphics plug-in for Excel.
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Company Will Demonstrate its Software Development Analytics Solution at Tech 2006 in October
August 28, 2006, MORRISVILLE, NC -- 6th Sense Analytics, a pioneer in improving software development metrics, today announced it has been selected by The Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) to demonstrate its technology innovations at Tech 2006. The conference will be held on Oct. 10 and 11 at North Carolina State University's McKimmon Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. 6th Sense will demonstrate its leading-edge technology for automatically collecting software development data and aggregating metrics, providing a basis for keeping software projects on time, on budget and on target with business goals. Data is gathered from the leading development tools and presented within a rich, web-based user interface, providing a variety of visualization and analysis tools for developers, project managers and IT executives. The product is offered as a software service delivered online via a web browser.
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Continued from:
http://www.6thsenseanalytics.com/blog/posts/638/
As it so happens in a recent Joel on Software series, Joel examined several software team management styles. There were a couple of references that I'd like to bring out that relate to my current business theme. However you'll also see connections back to my past blog themes on team leadership�
Check www.joelonsoftware.com for all of these posts and a vast history of solid insight and extremely relevant council.
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Great post from Kathy Sierra about challenging assumptions. According to Kathy, the thing about assumptions is they become so ingrained that people don't even know they are dealing with assumptions - assumptions have become fact.
Assumptions are a real problem when it comes to building software, because they can lead to things going wrong and as a result both money and time get wasted. Here's a brief list of some common assumptions that can be held by those on the business and IT side of the house when it comes to software projects:
- Everyone shares the same goals
- That IT has the necessary skills and resources to complete the task competently
- The engineering team has fully and clearly understood what it is they've been asked to deliver
- That business has been made aware of potential problems and limitations with the project
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When I first met Greg Burnell, the CEO and co-founder of 6th Sense Analytics, he explained some of the vision and driving forces behind their metrics product. His vision is to provide the analytical insights that allow software development teams to truly understand their behavior, leading towards building better software. Essentially � to provide the sorts of data where no engineer has gone before.
As many do when introduced to their analytics, my initial reaction was one of Orwellian Big Brother dynamics. I simply couldn't envision any developer or team wanting to have this level of insight into what was truly going on. That it would be too intrusive or corrupt the performance and creativity of the team. Another concern was that the developers would game the metrics as many have done before.
Imagine that.
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Things have been heating up in metrics. Recently, both Hewlett Packard and IBM announced separate plans to purchase companies that will give their customers greater power to manage IT assets. Of particular interest was HP's plan to buy Mercury Interactive for $4.5bn. That's HP's biggest deal since it bought Compaq, and it signals big systems companies are getting serious about giving their customers the ability to manage applications at a fine-grained level. HP should be expected to integrate Mercury with tools and interfaces in its OpenView suite.
Mercury's bread and butter is gathering and analyzing data from applications, which IT teams use to tune the performance of those applications. While HP is moving in the right direction in terms of visibility and tuning, following IBM and CA, there's an important piece still missing from HP's metrics and asset management puzzle. Indeed, this piece is missing from the stories of IBM and CA.
That piece? People.
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6th Sense is getting some star power. Dr. Philip Johnson, a pioneer in software development metrics and professor of information and computer sciences at the University of Hawaii's Collaborative Software Development Laboratory (phew), is coming aboard the good ship 6th Sense. Dr. Johnson is joining as a member of our advisory board, where he�ll lend his considerable skills and vision to our work in development metrics and also help our community building.
Dr. Johnson (or Philip as he likes to be called) is the principal creator and leader of the Hackystat project. Hackstat is an open, web services based framework that is capable of helping individuals collect metrics in order to gain greater insight into software development projects.
When we first started work on 6th Sense we conducted a thorough search of software development measurement and metrics, and quickly came to the conclusion Hackystat is the best there is. We immediately contacted Philip with a view to establishing a major, on-going relationship with him and his CSDL team.
Why? Well, we share a common and powerful vision that empirical software development can help bring in projects on time and on budget by giving teams the resources they need early on. By joining forces and working together we believe we can realize this vision quicker than if we worked separately in silos.
The Hackystat framework serves as the core technology for our sensors, which are already helping technology teams collate development metrics for people to keep their software projects running smoothly. In addition to contributing on going patches and bug fixes we will also contribute our sensors back to the community, to maintain openness and visibility. So far, we've already released sensors for Subversion and Bugzilla among other leading tools. Lastly, we are also contributing $25K to the CSDL for added support.
We're looking forward to a long, fruitful and - needless to say - enjoyable relationship with Philip, his team and the community in delivering on our shared vision of closing the knowledge gap between metrics and software development.
With software developers descending on Las Vegas (Mix06) and Santa Clara (EclipseCon), it�s high time we updated you about events at 6th Sense Analytics that should appeal to both communities. 6th Sense Analytics is close to debuting a browser-based service that helps software developers focus on doing what they care most about (developing) and also allows the business to get on with what it cares most about most (business).
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"In software development optimism is a disease, feedback is the cure." ~Kent Beck, Agitar Fellow
6th Sense's simple goal is to improve software development by providing feedback. Welcome to the newly launched 6th Sense Analytics website. You'll notice that this website is a tad different. We opted to make our home page a weblog to provide you with fresh information as we evolve our company and products. Our goal with this inaugural post is to introduce 6th Sense and cover some basic FAQ stuff. If we don't address your question, feel free to email us at info@6thsenseanalytics.com. Your question may even be the topic of a new post here.
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Dana Gardner recently blogged about 6th Sense Analytics on his ZDNet blog:
“As a researcher, I love the idea of new and accurate metrics on what goes on amid development in the real world. Enterprise or ISV architects should love to really know what tools their developers actually use, how, and to what degree they benefit the bottom line. With such knowledge, enterprises, contractor developers, and ISVs may be able to stop paying for shelfware, and double-down on the investments in the tools, platforms, and frameworks that are actually getting the job done.”
Dana’s post really puts our goals at 6th Sense Analytics in perspective.
Read Dana’s full post here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2329
