Week 5 - Information, Research, Estimation

Lecture

Information

Data $\rightarrow$ Information $\rightarrow$ Knowledge $\rightarrow$ wisdom

What level of information/knowledge is needed?

Immediate: narrow technical
Immediate: broader technical
Possibilities: technical
Possibilities: business value
Future: what changes do I need to be aware of

Sources of information

General
Technical (content)
Technical (support)
Business
Research

Information usefulness

Reliability
Validity
- Different levels
  - Primary sources
  - Secondary sources
  - Expert opinion
  - Uninformed opinion
- Evaluating sources
  - Authority of the source
  - Suitability of material
  - Sufficiency of material

Reference

Purpose

Acknowledge the original source of ideas and work that is not the author’s own.
To point the reader to the original documents so that they can determine independently whether the attributed sources support the author’s argument as written.
Help identify the author;s own ideas and arguments from that of their sources

Research

Project Estimation

Five steps in project estimation:

Determine the size of the project
Determine the effort required
Decide on the resources needed
Calculate the duration
Calculate the cost

Six approaches to project estimation

Expert judgement
- Advantages:
  - Relatively cheap estimation method
  - Takes relatively little time and effort
  - Can be applied early in the development cycle
  - Can be successful if experts have direct experience of similar systems
- Disadvantages:
  - Rather subjective
  - Depends on experience and judgement
  - Cannot be used if no suitable experts available
  - Assumes experts have dealt with similar systems
  - Assumes they all have reliable data available
Sum of the parts
- Makes use of work breakdown structure
- Appropriate level of granularity is important
  - too much detail takes too much time and introduce more error
  - insufficient detail means more difficult to assign tasks
Estimation by analogy
- Advantages:
  - Systematic, fairly fast
  - OK if sufficient historical data available
  - Can be applied early in the development cycle
- Disadvantages
  - Have to determine set of characteristics suitable for classifying systems
  - Requires a database containing systematically maintained historical size cost data

Reading

The Ultimate Guide to Project Tracking

What is Project Tracking

Project tracking begins early in the project with planning and goes on until the completion of a project.

Measuring project performance regularly to identify variances from the project management plan to make sure projects are on track.

Why Use Project Management Tracking

Four key benefits:

Real time information
problem identifiers
Team motivation
Easy and accurate reporting

Who Should be Involved in Project Tracking

Everyone working in the dark
Empowered teamwork

What are the Best Ways to Track Projects Effectively

Plan your project before it starts
Look for warning signs and resolve issues.
Monitor work schedule
Only count tasks as complete when complete
Be realistic - actuals and estimates
Look to the future

Six Reasons Why Research is Important

Reasons for the importance of research:

Acquire knowledge efficiently through research
Research helps in problem solving
Research provides the latest information
Research builds credibility
Research helps in business success
Research discover and seize opportunities

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research: What’s the Difference?

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research methods include gathering and interpreting non-numerical data. The following are some sources of qualitative data:

Interviews
Focus groups
Documents
Personal accounts or papers
Cultural records
Observation

Benefits:

Allows for creativity, varied interpretations and flexibility.
The scope of the research project can change as more information is gathered.

Limitations:

More subjective, containing more personal bias.
It ofter test on a smaller sample size.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research includes compiling numerical data to test causal relationships among variables. Some forms of data collection for this type of study include:

Experiments
Questionnaires
Surveys
Database reports

Benefits:

Produce objective data.
Can be quickly analyzed.

Limitations:

It cannot tailor their responses or add context.
Requires a large data sample.

What are research methods

Techniques or tools

Qualitative
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Observations
- Document analysis
- Oral history or life stories
Quantitative
- Surveys or questionnaires
- Observation
- Document screening
- Experiments

Mixed Methods Research

Integrate both qualitative and quantitative research. It provides a holistic approach combining and analyzing the statistical data with deeper contextualized insights.

Project Estimating – Analogous, Bottom-up, Parametric, three point

Three major parts to project estimation:

Effort estimation
Cost estimation
Resource estimation

Analogous Estimation (Top-down Estimating)

In analogous estimating, you first look for a similar project in the past, get its data, and use your expert judgement to find the approximate duration or cost for your project.

Bottom-up Estimating

All the components of WBS are estimated starting from bottom to the top.

If there is an activity cannot be estimated with a reasonable degree of confidence, the work within that activity is decomposed further to form more detailed activities.

The accuracy of bottom-up estimates is higher than analogous or parametric estimates. Meanwhile, it requires the maximum amount of time to estimate compared to all other estimating techniques.

Parametric Estimating

Parametric estimating uses project parameters along with historical data to calculate the cost or duration estimates.

More accurate than analogous estimates.

How to do parametric estimating?

Regression analysis - Find the relation between two variables
Learning curve

Three-point Estimating

It calculates three different estimates:

Optimistic ($O$) - Based on best-case scenario
Pessimistic ($P$) - Based on the worst-case scenario
Most Likely ($M$)

Simple Average (Triangular Distribution): $E=(P+O+M)/3$ Weighted Average (Beta Distribution): $E=(P+O+4M)/6$

How do you know what information sources to trust?

Who Made this Claim

Is it a named source or unknown or anonymous source? People are far less likely to make things up if they are named as the source of information because there may be consequences for giving false information.

After identifying the source of a claim, we need to identify whether the source is reliable.

What’s the Evidence to Support this claim

Misinformation promoters may be driven by various interests and often use emotionally charged content. It’s crucial to critically assess such information, ensuring sources are transparent about their evidence and methodologies. Skepticism is advised towards sources offering ‘exclusive’ details or untraceable data. Understanding the funding and influence behind research is also vital. The accuracy and context of a claim must be considered, recognizing that these can evolve over time.

What do Trusted Sources Say about this Claim

Fact-checking services, particularly those accredited by the IFCN, offer reliable databases to verify claims.