Thursday, January 29, 2009
Control limits
For normally distributed statistics, the area bracketed by the control limits will on average contain 99.73% of all the plot points on the chart, as long as the process is and remains in statistical control.
Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_limits
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Some Good Agile References
Books by Kent BeckArticles by Martin Fowler on
http://martinfowler.com/
such as http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileOffshore.html
http://www4.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~rumpe/ps/XP02.Limitations.pdf
http://agileindia.org/
Subscribe to 'agileindia' mailing list - http://agileindia.org/events.htm
Friday, January 23, 2009
Float
subsequent tasks (free float)
project completion date (total float)
Delphi technique
The Delphi method is a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of independent experts. The carefully selected experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, participants are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of the group. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results.[1]
Delphi [pron: delfI] is based on the principle that forecasts from a structured group of experts are more accurate than those from unstructured groups or individuals.[2] The technique can be adapted for use in face-to-face meetings, and is then called mini-Delphi or Estimate-Talk-Estimate (ETE). Delphi has been widely used for business forecasting and has certain advantages over another structured forecasting approach, prediction markets.[3]
Reference
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
SPI & CPI
greater than 1 is good (ahead of schedule)
Schedule Variance (SV) = EV-PV greater than 0 is good (ahead of schedule)
Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
Cost Variance (CV) = EV - AC
greater than 0 is good (under budget)
Cost Performance Index (CPI) = EV/AC
greater than 1 is good (under budget)
< 1 means that the cost of completing the work is higher than planned (bad)
= 1 means that the cost of completing the work is right on plan (good)
> 1 means that the cost of completing the work is less than planned (good or sometimes bad).
Earned Value Analysis
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project management technique for measuring project progress in an objective manner. EVM has the unique ability to combine measurements of scope, schedule, and cost in a single integrated system. When properly applied, EVM provides an early warning of performance problems. Additionally, EVM promises to improve the definition of project scope, prevent scope creep, communicate objective progress to stakeholders, and keep the project team focused on achieving progress.