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This document gives an overview of the process of Estimation for Transaction Based Support Projects. The introduction deals with the steps of estimation in a broad spectrum and is followed by a dedicated section on the detailed steps of Estimation for Support projects.
Purpose
The intent of this document is to present an approach: a consistent methodology that can be used to measure the size, effort and FTE requirement of Production Support projects.
Intended Audience
Project Managers, Project Leads for Production Support projects.
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Contents
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Problem to be Addressed .................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Production Support Projects An Overview................................................................................................................................ 4 Estimation Approach - Production Support Projects ................................................................................................................ 4 Estimation Process Flow for Production Support Projects...................................................................................................... 5 Size Estimation for Production Support Projects........................................................................................................................ 5 Effort Estimation...................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 FTE Determination ................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 Outstanding evidence of validity...................................................................................................................................................... 8 Take homes from this estimation model ....................................................................................................................................... 9
1.1
Problem to be Addressed
We are in an era where the significance of software estimation has been understood and efforts are channelized to build robust estimation frameworks. The majority of these efforts have been put into for developing estimation guidelines for Application development and Maintenance(ADM) projects. Time has come to address the estimation needs of other important areas of the IT industry.One such area would be the support projects, since the schedule for these projects is fixed in most of the cases, the neccessity of an estimation model has not been at the top of the agenda. An indepth analysis of the profitability of the support projects will show the vitality of estimations in profit margins. A fixed schedule does not ensure profit as it finally boils down to the effective resource employement which primarly depends on the estimates.This paper would bring in a dimensional shift in terms of estimation guidelines built in for IT industry as it addresses the estimation issues of one type of support project namely production support.
1.2
An application after being built is set in for production. The various stakeholders of the application need supports of different dimensions. The support activities could vary from creating users and it can go up to making minor changes in the application based on the requests raised by the users. Many a times the time frame for this kind of support is fixed by the customer . For example a project might be expected to provide support for 24*7 for five days a week for a period of three months.
1.3
Even prior to addressing how to estimate the question to be answered is what to estimate.The parameters to be estimated for a production support begins with the volume of work i.e size of the project. This paper considers the work volume to be performed as part of the production support projects in terms of the number of tickets/requests raised by the stake holders.Using the size value the effort for the project can be estimated. From effort the next parameter to be estimated will be the number of Full Time Equivalent i.e. the number of resources to be employed. As schedule for a project is fixed it is not considered for estimation. The estimation model presented in this paper is independent of the schedule as the the estimates derived from this model are for a week and this estimates are repeatable across weeks if there is no change in the work volume (i.e. no of tickets raised).
1.4
Start of Estimation
NO
YES
Ticket Distribution
Productivity determinator
Apply productivity to Estimate Base Effort Estimate Actual Effort Effort contributing factors
End of Estimation
1.5
Production support jobs are primarily transaction based i.e. ticket based and mainly consists of the following typical activities Support given through email, over phone, changing data in the screen (e.g. granting privilege, password reset etc.) Providing work around solutions, data fixes Bug fixing, providing minor enhancement works Based on the work volume involved in each of these activities, the tickets can be categorized into various complexities (for example: Simple, Average, Complex). Normalization can be done for the different categories of tickets to derive the size of a production support engagement which can be represented in terms of Production Support Points (PSP). PSP calculated using Ticket Distribution hence indicates the normalized size derived from the ticket inflow i.e. the number of tickets to be handled by the project within a span of time
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Note: In case the ticket distribution is not available, a distribution ratio can be assumed based on the historical data analysis from past project data for a particular organization.
1.6
Effort Estimation
Overview
The effort for production support projects is calculated by applying productivity on the size calculated in terms of Production Support Points (PSP). In its simplest form, this relationship is expressed as: Effort = Size (PSP) / Productivity where Productivity is expressed as PSP / Person Months.
Productivity
The generic definition of the term productivity is output per unit of input. In terms of estimation parameters it can be defined as size per unit effort. Productivity is the measure of effectiveness/efficiency. Productivity as a parameter provides a standard metric to compare performance between/within organizations. From estimation perspective productivity value enables effort estimation. If the unit of size is in PSP and the effort in terms of person hour (PH) then productivity would be PSP per unit of person hour.
Productivity Determination
Analysis of historical reveals that the key productivity determinators of a typical production support engagement are Application Platform Known Error Database (KEDB) No of Interfaces the application has 1. Platform Selection
Productivity
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Regression analysis of historical data shows that the productivity of a support engagement varies with the platform of the application being supported rather than the technology. Some of the possible platforms are Client Server, Mainframe/Legacy, Web based, ERP/Package, etc.
Productivity PSP/PM
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2. The impact of Known Error Database (KEDB) on Productivity The productivity for a support job increases manifold with the presence of a strong Known Error Database (KEDB). Hence the base productivity needs to be adjusted depending on the impact of the KEDB present in a particular scenario
Productivity
Moderate Impact
Strong Impact
3. Impact of the No of interfacing applications present With the increase in the number of interfacing applications, the resultant productivity decreases. Hence this factor needs to be considered while computing the resultant productivity.
Description Effort spent on tickets that are not solved by the project but routed to another team. The effort spent on the above tickets involves analysis of such tickets and also the effort required to route them to another team. Working of Defects To solve some of the tickets raised by the user, the team requires with Business inputs form business. This is the effort spent to collect this information from the business team. Tool Usage Usage of tools for solving the tickets. Greater usage of tool indicates a decreasing impact on effort Reusable Component Availability to access to code blocks of the current/similar application, which can be reused for the current project Team's Business The amount of knowledge the team has on the business knowledge functionalities of the application being supported. An extensive knowledge on business reduces the resolving time of the tickets Team's Technology It indicates the teams acquaintance with the technology of the Experience application being supported. SME availability Number of Subject Matter Expertise available. Lack of SME will have an increasing impact on effort whereas if more SMEs are available, effort will come down. Code The ease of understandability of the code written. If the code is Understandability difficult to understand then the effort taken code related problems increases.
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For solving some of the tickets the development teams input might be required. This is the effort spent to get the information from the development team. Monitoring system status w.r.t different parameters like System Monitoring transaction throughput, batch monitoring, job status etc Includes administrative activities like privilege setup, buffer space System Admin management etc Reporting & Metric The effort spent on preparing weekly or monthly status reports, Generation metric reports etc. The effort spent in attending meetings convened for project Application Meetings purpose. The effort required for supporting releases. This effort excludes Supporting Releases ticket solving effort. Training Support Effort spent on training the resources for the project. Outage Management Effort due to preventive and corrective actions to manage outage. Data Effort Spent on data aggregation, segregation and for data Reconciliation/Cleanup population. Documentation Work Effort spent on documentation activities in the project. Service Plans Effort spent on constructing service plans. Service Reviews Effort spent on reviewing the defined service plans. All the queries raised by the user which do not come in the form of tickets. It involves queries raised through phone calls or Ad-hoc Queries messaging.
1.7
FTE Determination
The effort estimation would pave the basis for estimating the resources to be employed. Once the effort calculation is done, the next step involves calculation of the Full Time Equivalent (FTE) required to support the job. In order to calculate the number of FTEs, the 1st step is to calculate the effective working hours per FTE per week. This is less than the total working hours per day specified by the organization since we need to take the following factors into account Total no. of days spent in training and holidays: This value varies based on projects/geographies etc. User must input this value based on the applicable number of holidays and training days. Productive hours per FTE per day: This value differs from the organization mandated working hours per day per associate. Only the productive hours needs to be accounted. Taking the effective working hours per FTE per week, the workload coverage per shift (in case there are multiple shifts operating per day and the minimum FTE requirement per shift), the FTE requirement per shift can be calculated.
1.8
For pilot rollout, few support projects were selected from various TCS branches. Training sessions were conducted to educate the project leaders / managers from selected projects. The project managers of the selected sample projects performed the re-estimation of their projects using the Production Support model. Consolidated data from the sample projects were reviewed and the re-estimation data was compared with original estimation data and the actual effort spent by the projects and actual FTEs engaged for the job. The graph below shows the percentage variation from the actual (for both effort and FTE) for these projects.
1.9
The model forms the basis for a single standardized tested approach of estimation for production support projects is available. The estimation framework advocated by the model creates greater level of transparency in terms of estimation when submitted to the client. The implementation of the model in the organization apart from serving the purpose of estimation also servers as mechanism to capture the organization data for production support projects. With advent of PSP a single size unit is available for production support projects. A single size unit paves way for comparison among projects. The productivity value in terms of PSP/PH is an indicator of the efficiency of the project and it can be used for comparison between projects.
Confidential
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