THE ISBSG ESTIMATING, BENCHMARKING & RESEARCH SUITE RELEASE 9

The International Software Benchmarking Standards Group has launched Release 9 of its software Estimating, Benchmarking and Research Suite. The major contents of this CD are:

	A 50% increase in the number of projects to more than 3,000 New Developments, Enhancements and Re-developments.
	The ISBSG Estimation Reality Checker Tool Version 3.
	The ISBSG Comparative Estimation Tool Version 4.

Data on more than 3,000 projects is supplied on an Excel spreadsheet. Additional data fields have been provided on the R9 CD including much more extensive data on Architecture plus the tools and documentation used by the projects.
Some highlights from the data are:

	289 Web development projects
	926 Multi-tier/Client Server projects
	130 Java & 144 C++ projects

To find out what is on the CD before you buy, down load the demographics and data field descriptions from: www.isbsg.org. Select “Downloads” from the vertical menu, then select the two down load options for Field Descriptions and Demographics.

The Reality Checker tool uses regression tables based on the ISBSG data to provide you with an early lifecycle check of your project estimate.

The Comparative Estimating tool now handles multi-tier projects and provides you with project estimates based on selecting projects with the similar characteristics to your project.

ISBSG Project Data

The CD contains a large body of data about completed software projects. There are many potential uses for such a data set, including:

	Benchmarking your project or organisation against similar projects, or perhaps against the whole data set
	Assisting you with estimating your own software development projects
	Assisting you in evaluating the benefits of software or hardware platforms and development techniques.
	Software development and engineering research.

Estimation Reality Checker Tool Version 3

The ISBSG Estimation Reality Checker V3 is a software tool that utilises the ISBSG data on the CD with regression analysis to quickly generate “ball park” estimates of the work effort and elapsed time, (duration), plus project delivery rate and speed of delivery required for a software development project. These estimates can be used as a “reality check” of your own estimate.

The tool allows a user to enter the project size, expressed in IFPUG function points and a combination of development platform, primary programming language type and development type in order to generate estimates.

In addition to generating estimates that indicate the most likely values for project work effort and elapsed time, the ISBSG Estimation Reality Checker V3 provides a confidence interval function that can be used to generate estimate ranges. These estimate ranges can be used to highlight the range of values from most conservative to most optimistic that can be expected to be achieved for a particular software project. This new version of the tool also provides an extensive range of graphs plus details of the regression equations used to generate its estimates.

Comparative Estimation Tool Version 4

The ISBSG Comparative Estimating Tool is an MS Excel based tool that is used to generate estimates of software project effort, delivery rate, duration and speed of delivery. These estimates are determined from the averages of project delivery rates and speed of delivery for a selection of projects taken from the ISBSG data on the CD that are deemed to be similar to the project for which the estimate is required.

The tool filters the ISBSG data to ensure that a comparison of “apples with apples”. It then allows the user to specify up to eleven project attributes to further refine the choice of projects that can be compared to the project being estimated. A range of estimates is provided: “Optimistic”, “Likely” and “Conservative”. The estimates generated are for the core software development team (ie project team, project management and project administration), they do not include development team support, computer operations support or end-users or clients.

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