Implementing a commercial estimation software tool has eliminated one to two years of data collection, quickening the pace toward receiving Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level 3 Certification for General Dynamics Calgary. Companies undergoing CMM assessment are required to develop an estimating process and many do so from scratch, a time-consuming process. General Dynamics Calgary uses a commercial software package for its
estimating process, saving approxi-mately 60 hours of time for develop-ing the procedure.
More important, the company has taken advantage of the commercial software’s large database of software development projects to eliminate the need to spend a year or two capturing the historical data that would have been required to produce accurate estimates. “The commercial software gives us access to costing data for thousands of projects that we could have never been able to generate on our own,” says Al Hussein, process architect for General Dynamics Engineering Process Group in Calgary,
Alberta.“While we could have achieved Level
III assessment without it, SEER-SEM helped us get there faster and at a lower cost.”
General Dynamics Calgary is part of General Dynamics Canada, the country's largest defense systems integrator and an international supplier of land, airborne and maritime systems, software and hardware, ranging from advanced products to completely integrated command, control, and communication systems. General
Dynamics Canada is a business unit of General Dynamics, a known leader in the defense industry, employing
approximately 68,400 people worldwide and anticipating 2004 revenue of $19 billion.
Copyright © 2004 Galorath Corporation
Speeding up Level 3 CMM Certification Process with Estimation Tool
General Dynamics Calgary“While we could have achieved Level III assess-ment without it, SEER-SEM helped us get there faster and at a lower cost.”
General Dynamics Canada’s achievements include:
1) the world's first digital fire control system, first installed on the
Abrams M1 Tank;
2) 4WARN, the first remotely operated and autonomous biological
detection system; 3) the world's first
digitized army, Iris System, deployed at all levels of the Canadian Army; 4) a deployable air
traffic control system that fits in a single C130 Hercules; and, 5) the first Multi-Sensor,
Remote-Controlled Landmine Detection System for the Canadian Forces.
Decision to obtain CMM
certification
About a year ago, General Dynamics Calgary decided to create a process baseline to move forward with engineering process improve-ment, and selected CMM because of its industry credibility and strong track record for improving quality for a variety of devel-opment firms. CMM for Software describes the principles and practices underlying soft-ware process maturity. It's intended to help software organizations improve the maturity of their own software development program in terms of an evolutionary path from ad hoc, chaotic processes to mature, disciplined software processes. The model
defines a mature software organization as one that possesses an organization-wide ability for managing software development and maintenance processes. General
Dynamics Canada management set a goal to achieve CMM Level 3 certification, where the software process for both management and engineering is documented, standardized and integrated into a standard software
process for the organiza-tion. General Dynamics Calgary is currently in the process of moving to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), which extends the best practices of the CMM to other engi-neering disciplines.
Cost estimation is one of four basic CMM project management process areas addressing the basic activities
related to establishing and maintaining the project plan and commit-ments, monitoring progress against the plan, taking corrective action, and managing supplier agreements.“Cost estimation plays a key role in the project planning process area of the CMM,” says David Zubrow, a senior member of the technical staff at the
Software Engineering Institute, the organiza-tion that developed the CMM.“Cost
estimation is a formal rating requirement for CMM Level 2, and as organizations move to higher levels there is a clear expectation that their estimating practices will improve.
The detailed cost estimate created during the project planning phase is used to make commitments to customers and also used by management to monitor the performance of the project.The accuracy and integrity of the cost estimate and schedule are important because they set expectations that play an
important role in customer satisfaction. As the project gets underway, comparing the actuals to the plan tells whether you are ahead or behind on schedule or cost. Management can use this information to take appropriate actions such as reallocating resources or
adjusting the project schedule.” General Dynamics Calgary had been using SEER-SEM from Galorath Incorporated of El Segundo, California, for seven years prior to seeking CMM Level 3 assessment, so the decision to base its estimation proce-dure on it was not a difficult one.
“Without SEER-SEM
we would have had to develop a manual process which would have taken at least 90 hours and also have been less accurate and verifiable than our current methods,” Hussein says.“But even a manual process would have had to rely on at least two years of historical data to make reliable estimates and we don’t have that much data at this point. Our
resources have been nearly fully occupied with very large projects for a number of years and we have just recently moved into a new phase where we are also competing for and winning multiple smaller projects. Fortunately, since the use of SEER-SEM had already been institutionalized here, all we had to do was to update and
document our existing estimation procedure which took only about 30 hours.” It should be noted that General Dynamics Calgary also has an alternative abbreviated manual
proce-dure that it uses only for very small projects that don’t justify a full-blown estimation procedure.
Parametric cost estimation process
The new processbegins with estimating the size of the project as measured in source lines of code and breaking the project down into its component parts in as much detail as possible at an early phase. The software engi-neer in charge of each piece of the project produces a technical
description of her component. Each software engineer provides three estimates for the number of lines of code in each block—least, likely, and most—using either his own judgment or by comparison to pre-vious projects. Next, the engineers select a particular knowledge base from SEER-SEM that matches the type of project needing estimates. SEER-SEM’s multiple knowledge bases address client-server, embedded, dis-tributed, stand-alone systems, varied MIS applications, graphics, and signal processing environments.
The software provides six simultaneous set-tings for each project element to accurately select the knowledge base most similar to the current project. Size estimates are entered in SEER-SEM and the user selects knowledge base settings including:
1) a platform such as “avionics;”
2) an application type such as “command and control;”
3) an acquisition method such as “new development;”
4) a development method such as “waterfall;” and, 5) a develop-ment standard such as “mil spec 2167A.”
Each knowledge base has a set of associat-ed default parameters to help define the productivity of the programmers on the project.An example
of a typical parameter is one that measures the level of formality of the program.
A manned space flight, for example, requires a formal program run to military standards so high-level designs, detailed designs, and test plans are presented at standup
presentations requiring a considerable amount of preparation.The majority of mili-tary programs, on the other hand, use high-grade commercial standards simply involving technical interchange meetings that demand less preparation.
Other input parameters to use in the soft-ware estimation model include the amount of code that can be re-used from previous projects, the programming language used, security constraints, experience of the devel-opment team, develdevel-opment method, and application complexity.The cost estimator
and software engineer have the option of changing any of the standards that are preset by the knowledge base definition. If a
standard is changed, SEER-SEM forces the estimator to enter notes on why the
parameter was changed.A probability level is also entered for each parameter so that the risk of changes in the parameters can be incorporated into the cost estimates. SEER-SEM accesses its extensive knowledge bases to identify programs similar to the ones
needing estimates and generates productivity rate predictions that include a probability range for the potential rate based on the uncertainty factors entered by the estimators.
Improvements in accuracy and
consistency
General Dynamics Calgary managers are con-fident that the information provided by the parametric approach is better than the man-ual method.The estimates produced by the new method are more consistent for several reasons: they do not depend on the skill and experience of the estimator, they are easily understood and modified by supervisors, and the commercial tool eliminates calculation errors.“The structured approach provides a much better platform for organizing and documenting the highly sensitive cost driv-ing parameters,” Hussein says.“Project man-agers and others reviewing each proposal easily see, not only the cost of each module, but also exactly how the cost was deter-mined and which parameters affect it the