Page 102 - DCAP305_PRINCIPLES_OF_SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING

Principles of Software Engineering

Notes When estimating total amount of time for a milestone or an activity, Burenius and Lindsted
suggests a simple formula for calculating:
Pocus formula:
*
Pessimistic +4 most likely+ optimistic
Estimated time: =
6
5.1.3 Resources
When you have identified certain natural steps in a plan and set up activities it is time to allocate
resources to each activity. Examples of resources in a project can be:
• Organizations
• Individuals
• Equipment
• Furniture

• Facilities
• Test laboratories
• External contractors
• Utilities
There are many factors to consider when choosing your resources for a software project. These
factors can be e.g. computer memory capacity, the computer processor use and the capacity of
the communication channel.

Since the estimation of the resources not always is so easy you might want to use a helping tool.
Burton and Michael chooses to use an art gallery scenario for this task figure 5.2. This chart is
a very simple tool and therefore applicable on the small-scale project.

Figure 5.2: An Art Gallery Scenario

Chunk description Skills Materials Equipment Time Cost
Project set up and 20 days
approved

This scenario will help you to determine what skills, materials, equipment, time and costs you
will need to achieve your objectives that are stated to the left of the chart. You should beware
of looking at the items in isolation, which will fail you from getting the full picture. Every item
reflects on another.

Burenius and Lindstedt suggest another way of estimating the resources. They say that for the
small-scale project the easiest way to estimate the resources within a project is to discuss which
resources will be between milestones in a step. You begin from the start with digging up all
the work that is needed to be able to get to the next milestone. You continue this until the first
step of the plan is done. Then you summarise the resources needed and the final result should
state the total amount of hours for the whole step. This amount divided with available capacity
will be the length of the step. Be observant though if people working in the project only work
part-time. A certain slack is also necessary to plan.
The authors also give us some guidelines when estimating the resources:
• Avoid individual estimations. Invite others to estimate preferably both optimists and
pessimists.

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