Software Project Management in Practice

4.4. SUMMARY

The basic goal of effort estimation is to generate reasonable estimates that will work most of the time. The following are key lessons from the estimation and scheduling approaches used at Infosys:

• Use past data to estimate. Prefer data from similar projects to general process capability data. Use a model to estimate, but allow flexibility for adjusting estimates to accommodate project-specific factors.

• Employ different models in different situations. Bottom-up estimation is effective when project details are known. Use the top-down approach if you can estimate the size and productivity, and the use case approach when using a use-case-based development approach.

  Table 4.9. Portion of the Detailed Schedule for the ACIC Project

  Module ...