Tutorial 7: Realistic Scheduling
Window on the World
Issue 0
Tutorial 7: Planning Realistic Schedules Using Software Architecture
By Dan Paulish
During a recent business trip to Switzerland, I was pleasantly surprised about how remarkably punctual the Swiss Rail system it. The world's software industry, however, has a reputation that missed software product delivery dates are the rule rather than the exception. On Monday afternoon, Rod Nord and I, from Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, New Jersey, provided some tips about planning and committing to software development schedules that are more likely to be met. Our tutorial is called Planning Realistic Schedules Using Software Architecture (T07) and was given on Monday, 5 June 2000, at 14:00-17:30. We believe that by using the approach described in our tutorial, software development schedules can be planned within an estimation error of 15-20%. Such a schedule deviation can often be managed so that release dates are more likely to be met. The approach emphasizes not committing to schedules too early and coupling the estimate to the high-level architecture design. The design approaches are described within a new book, Applied Software Architecture published by Addison Wesley, that captures practices and experiences from a number of Siemens software projects.Designer
and Webmistress
Caroline Kehoe