Objective
I.C.E. Computer Services Ltd., founded in 1972 to provide various secretarial support and recruitment services to local, West of Ireland, businesses, has evolved into a company providing a range of Computer related and non-Computer related services to local businesses and to the wider business community throughout Ireland. The services offered include Computer Systems Training and Software Development and Support for both custom developed systems and standard packaged software products. The focus of this PIE is on the Software Development and Support activities.
I.C.E. have identified the Software Development department as having major potential for growth in the next 5 years. We have recognised our vulnerability in that our key people do not work to a repeatable documented system. At present it is difficult to expand our business because of the lead-in time required for new staff to understand the existing software or how to maintain it. PIE objectives are to develop and document a software development lifecycle appropriate to our business needs and based on the new lifecycle to develop a complementary cost estimation formula. We hope to be in a position to hire additional staff, improve our productivity and ultimately improve overall profitability because new personnel will work to predefined guidelines and need less personal direction and support from existing staff. In addition we will be able to bid fixed price contracts knowing our costs and expecting the contracts to be profitable.
THE EXPERIMENT
I.C.E. Computer Services Ltd. will define a Systems Development Lifecycle process specifically suited to it's business profile. I.C.E. will also define a project estimation algorithm, again, specifically suited to it's business. These will then be implemented in the Software Development functions and subject to refinement / improvement. Their usage will be measured over time and their impact on the business will be assessed. This assessment will be carried out by continually recording details of actual time spent on each project / activity and measuring the impact on the software development functions in terms of predictability and efficiency. The measurements will include comparison with data gathered from prior to the implementation of the lifecycle methodology / costing algorithm and ongoing data gathered during the implementation.
EXPECTED IMPACT AND EXPERIENCE
More discipline will be brought into the software development and maintenance processes and into cost estimating for new contracts. Documented guidelines for both will bring a consistency we have never achieved. - target is to have all projects completed to within 5% of original estimated cost. The programming staff members will be able to share work more easily and the quality and productivity of their work should improve. With a formal cost estimating system we will be able to determine when to bid on a contract and what profit we can expect from it. This process will be an initial step towards certification to ISO9001.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software software development
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics productivity
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Coordinator
90 Galway
Ireland
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