Skip to main content

Effort Estimation Blogs

Process of estimating and re-forecasting how much effort is required to develop or maintain a software application, traditionally measured in the hours worked by a person.
Software Project Size Tips
Practical Software Estimation Tips for Communicating with Business Leaders
These tips are designed to bridge the gap between estimators and stakeholders, allowing you to explain your software project estimate in a way that is easy to understand.
Software Project Metrics and Tracking
Monitoring Software Project Progress by Money Spent Can Be Misleading

Monitoring cost alone does not always show the full picture of why software projects fail, but tracking other metrics like work completed and duration enable early re-forecasting and course correction.

Software Project Cost and Estimation
The Balancing Point between Project Cost and Schedule

Using a parametric estimation software, such as SLIM-Estimate, allows you to find the big performance and cost differences that happen with minor staffing and schedule changes changes.

New Article: Measuring Effort and Productivity of Agile Projects

Andy Berner identifies best practices for measuring effort and productivity in agile development.
New Article: Avoiding a Doomed Software Project by Checking the Staff Build-Up Plan

In this article for Contract Management Magazine, QSM's Gene Shuman describes an effective staff build-up plan to determine if a software project can succeed.
Woman looking at data charts on a laptop computer
The "Typical Software Project" Over Time

Data on what a "typical” IT project in the QSM historical database looks like, and how it has changed over time over 10 years.
Animated drawing of 3 people holding a huge calculator.
Effort: What's Behind that Number?

Helpful hints for defining a robust and consistent software development effort metric.