Kjetil Moløkken-Østvold discussed how requirement handling and estimation are important factors in reducing software project overruns. He presented a case study of Lindorff, a debt collection company that experienced overruns. Lindorff implemented the web collaboration tool Symphonical to improve requirement specification, refinement, communication and estimation across distributed teams. Results showed reduced perceived effort overruns from 25% to 12% after two years of using Symphonical. Respondents reported that the tool greatly improved requirement handling and some felt it helped estimation. Moløkken-Østvold concluded that analyzing estimation challenges and implementing collaborative web tools can help address them.

1. Technology Supported Requirement Handling and Estimation Kjetil Moløkken-Østvold – Conceptos Consulting NDC2010, 16.-18. June, Oslo

2. Aboutthe speaker: Kjetil Moløkken-Østvold Senior Partner at Conceptos Consulting Academic and research background PostDoc and Assistant Director at Simula Research Laboratory (Norway) MSc (Siv.Ing.) and PhD from the University of Oslo (Norway) Published 23 papers on various topics, including estimation, project management, agile, collaboration, communication, contracts etc. Recent commercial projects External quality assurance and consulting for several large public sector projects (>500 MNOK) Process improvement for financial and telecom companies

3. Today’s message

4. Contents Requirement handling and estimation The case: Lindorff Problem Solution Results Conclusion

5. Requirement handling and estimation

6. Software Project Overruns About 70-80% of all projects encounter effort (cost) overruns¹ The average magnitude of effort overruns is 30-40% Similar results for schedule overruns No apparent change the past 30-40 years ¹Moløkken-Østvold, Jørgensen, Tanilkan, Gallis, Lien and Hove. A Survey on Software Estimation in the Norwegian Industry, In 10th International Software Metrics Symposium (METRICS 2004)

7. Is requirement handling important? Requirement processes demand Structure and a long-term perspective Close collaboration with customers/users Should you have A big up-front requirement process, Only one for each iteration, or A combination? Many have trouble with requirement processes in agile development

8. Requirement handling Changed and new requirements are perceived as the customers' most frequent contribution to overruns¹ Overruns are prevented by the availability of competent customers and capable decision makers Avoid the influence of irrelevant and misleading information ¹ S. Grimstad, M. Jørgensen, and K. J. Moløkken-Østvold. The Clients' Impact on Effort Estimation Accuracy in Software Development Projects, In: 11th IEEE International Software Metrics Symposium (METRICS 2005), Como, Italy, September 19-22, pp. 3, IEEE, 0 ed.. 0, 2005.

9. Frequent communication Previous studies have found communication to be important for project success Frequent communication can be used to prioritize features, set focus on bug-fixing or include more functionality (Beck and Fowler, Planning Extreme Programming, 2001) Motivated in part by Cockburn¹, we explored the frequency of communication between the contractor and the customer ¹ Cockburn, "The End of Software Engineering and the Start of Economic-Cooperative Gaming," ComSIS, 2004.

10. Contact frequency and overruns A Kruskal-Wallis test for difference results in p=0.023 The corresponding size of effect is d=1.25, indicating a large size of effect

11. The requirement pyramid © Project managers Customers End-users Interaction designers Developers and testers Precision Communication costs Abstraction Increases Levels Roles Characteristics

12. Agile development and estimation? ”-the concept of an overrun is not one typically found in agile development processes themselves, and precision estimation up front is not typically seen as a priority.” - Comment from anonymousreviewer, Agile 2007, researchtrack.

13. Main challenge It appears as if many books, papers and tutorials in the Agile community assumes: A customer with no need for budget or schedule when starting a project No need for long term planning within the development team(s) That minor estimates derived as you go (e.g. for sprints) are sufficient

14. Estimating Agile projects Agile projects are hardly immune to overruns, delays and bad business decisions based on poor estimates “Planning Poker” or similar techniques for estimating sprints or releases are important, but not sufficient It is often necessary to provide a relatively accurate estimate of total project delivery schedule and costs at en early stage, due to: Bidding Budgeting Staffing Scheduling Release planning All of the above…

15. Combination of estimates may reduce overruns Several studies have found that combination of estimates may reduce over-optimism and overruns¹ True for both contract work and in-house development Combination in itself may be more important than the method chosen ¹ K. J. Moløkken-Østvold, N. C. Haugen, and H. C. Benestad. Using Planning Poker for Combining Expert Estimates in Software Projects , Journal of Systems and Software 81(12):2106-2117, 2008.

16. Why combine estimates? Obtain knowledge from various sources Avoid extreme decisions Synchronize perceptions about estimates and work at hand Create ownership of estimates Remove irrelevant information (if using moderator) Introduce a ”devil’s advocate”

17. Pitfalls when combining estimates Passive participants Depending on chosen method: political pressure (groupthink) Requires good moderators and experts Time-consuming and costly (?)

18. Some methods for combining estimates

19. Delivery (release) estimated with Wideband Delhi A release for NextLevel Six estimators representing development and business Release was broken down to a set of requirements (about 30 elements to estimate)

20. Estimation should be an integrated part of the requirement process Estimation, prioritization and planning of requirements provides new information Several roles should be involved in the estimation Consider involving the customer as well Estimation should happen at several ”levels” (ref. the pyramid) in order to verify and triangulate

21. Project processes A study found that effort overruns differed significantly depending on project process¹ Sequential (waterfall): 55% Flexible (agile, iterative): 24% Projects with a flexible process ranked higher on: Good requirements Good collaboration between developers and business/customer ¹ Moløkken-Østvold and Jørgensen, "A Comparison of Software Project Overruns“, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2004.

22. The easy part when implementing agile processes Having some meetings while not sitting down Moving yellow notes around a whiteboard Using strange job titles

23. The hard part when implementing agile processes Developing and prioritizing requirements Providing (accurate) estimates Collaborating between developers and customers

24. The hard part is even harder in a distributed environment

25. The case: Lindorff Lindorff Group is a leading outsourced receivables management company in Europe and on a global basis Lindorff has approximately 2200 employees Offices in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Russia and Sweden

26. NextLevel Project Purpose of project To deliver a new .NET GUI on an existing debt collection application Re-write business logic from Powerhouse to PL/SQL and .NET

27. NextLevel Project Distributed participants Developers in Oslo and Bø Testers and business developers in Oslo, Røyken and Trondheim Users/customers in Røyken, Oslo, Trondheim and other locations

28. Internal improvement study Q4 – 2007, findings: Poor routines for communicating and prioritizing requirements Effort overruns (about 25%) Internal collaboration rated as average

29. Describing, refining, prioritizing and communicating requirements is difficult for business people Understanding, estimating and developing requirements is difficult for software developers

30. Problem: inefficient communication

32. Lindorff joined a project financed by Innovation Norway

34. Example features used by Lindorff

35. Live Allows for synchronized collaborative work Actions performed by one person is shown in real-time to others logged in Used in Requirement workshops Requirement reviews Used when the meeting is held in more than one location

36. Sharing Share one or more information containers (notes) with collaborators Used in Requirement specification Requirement quality assurance Used to get input from resources outside the project Sporadic contributors

37. Voting/estimation Used for estimating requirements/user stories in collaboration Used in advance of the developers estimation meeting, i.e. the first estimation iteration Used in the estimation meeting to administrate estimation iteration 2 (and if needed; iteration 3) Can also be used to prioritize requirements etc.

38. Voting/estimation (cont.)

39. Conversations A history of in-context discussions, replaces mail etc. Used through out the requirement process, from the initial workshop to the final quality assurance Helps keep track of the evolution of the requirements

40. Template A default text on notes (requirements/user stories) Used in order to make sure the requirements are expressed in a format that makes sense to the developers to ”force” the requirement handlers to provide mandatory information

41. Tool Reuse settings/templates Used in order to be able to reuse structures and default text on notes in later projects/deliveries Supports the use of the chosen methodology

42. Results

45. All respondents (IT and business) reported that use of Symphonical had greatly improved how requirements were specified, refined and communicated

46. Estimation

47. About half reported that Symphonical had improved the estimation process

48. The other half reported no discernible impact from Symphonical by itself (though it could have played a role along with other improvements)

50. Conclusion

51. Lessons learned Analyze your situation regarding quality of requirements and magnitude of effort overruns Get rid of static documents (Word, Excel etc.) shared via email and informal communication (calls, notes on desk etc.) Implement a web-based collaboration platform

52. The future of work?

53. Q&A

54. Thank you! Contact information: Presentation: http://www.conceptos.no/ Email: Please visit our stand here at NDC! This research project was Funded by Innovation Norway Conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kjetil Kristensen, founder and Principal Consultant of Kristensen Consulting Caveat Emptor: the author of this presentation is a member of the board of directors at Symphonical, and has ownership interests in the company