Instructions for configuring the software estimation tool

The spreadsheet allows configuration of the different ratios involved in the process. Configuration is done in cells where texts is colored blue. This will have to be done once for your organization and then the template can be copied over for using for each individual project. For each project you will not have to change any configuration (unless you really want to) and you would only have to enter data into cells marked with background set as yellow.

Configuration should proceed as follows

a) Configuration of the proportion of hours to be spent in the categories of activities involved - requirements, design, development, testing, management, deployment. This is to be done in the 'Configuration' sheet in a table that says 'Time split up for Categories'.

b) Configuration of the size of the project based on the number of coding hours involved. The system supports 4 sizes - micro, small, medium, large. You can configure the ranges for the coding hours in the 'Configuration' sheet in a table that says 'Configuration for project sizes based on coding hours'.

c) Configuration of whether a given activity has to be included for a given sized project. This is done in the 'Activities' sheet. Columns J, K, L, M will have to be filled in with either 1 or 0 based on whether the activity has to be included for the given sized project or not.

d) Configuration of the proportion of time to be spent on each of the different activities. This is done in the 'Activities' sheet. Column G will have to be filled with the percentage of time of the high level category that you have to spend for the given activity. For example if coding is expected to take only 70% of the Development category then the number 70 will have to be filled in column G against the row that has Category column as 'Development' and Activity column as 'Coding'. Column I will have to be filled with the minimum time required for the activity. Because the whole sheet is a game of percentages setting low values for total coding hours could give very small values. This column will ensure that a minimum number of hours are allocated for each activity irrespective of the size of the project. Do note that each activity is uniquely identified by a key comprising of the high level category and the name of the activity. This key will be used later in the 'Roles' sheet as well as for final calculations and presentation of data. To aid in proper configuration of the percentage time for each category there is a check table in the 'Check' sheet with the percentages for each categories. The check table shows the sums of percentages you have assigned to activities against each category.

e) Configuration of the proportion of time different roles have to spend on each of the different activities. This is done in 'Roles' sheet. Each of the activities from the activities sheet are present in the 'Roles' sheet as multiple rows one each for each role to be involved in that activity. The activity is identified by the key column which is created using concatenation of the Category and Activity columns in the sheet. So if you are adding new rows be careful with the spellings and ensure that they are the same as in the 'Activities' sheet. When adding new rows you will have to insert a row and then copy over the row above or below into the newly inserted row to ensure that you copy the formulas in the cells. Then you can edit the relevant cells as needed.

f) Configuration of the productivity of different designations. This is done in the 'Configuration' sheet under a table that says 'Productivity ratios for developers and testers '. Different designations for the Developer and Tester roles can be configured to have different productivities. If SE1 has a productivity ratio of 2 and SE2 has a productivity ratio of 1 then it would mean that SE1 will take twice the time as the estimated hours while SE2 will take the same time as the estimated hours.