Planning and Estimation Tool to Advance Value of Borland CaliberRM Requirements Management Solution.
Borland Software Corporation today announced the acquisition of ESTIMATE Professional, a software project planning and estimation tool from Software Productivity Center (SPC), a Canadian-based software process improvement company. This newly acquired tool will be embedded within the next version of the Borland CaliberRM requirements management solution.
The requirements-based planning capabilities of ESTIMATE Professional allow users to more reliably predict the required investment, time-to-market and associated risks of software development projects before they begin. The ability to select the right projects, apply the right resources to those projects and more reliably predict the outcome of these investment decisions can help companies maximize the business value of their software.
“Software is a manufacturing process and manufacturing isn’t a guessing game. There is too much at stake,” said Boz Elloy, senior vice president of software products at Borland Software. “As our industry matures, software must become a managed process from planning through delivery just like any other business-critical function. ESTIMATE Professional is a best-of-its-class technology that has been validated numerous times in the market. It brings an added level of business discipline to requirements and project management, and it will be a major painkiller for any business analyst or project manager — our CaliberRM customers.”
The new capabilities within CaliberRM will help users predict staffing, scheduling and budget parameters against specific business requirements. The solution will also flag problems and detect variances throughout the application lifecycle, allowing users to address problems earlier in the cycle when the cost is less. Users can then steer the project back on course or end it before committing additional resources for a project that can’t provide adequate return on investment.
“Cost estimation adds an entirely new dimension to the value of requirements management,” said Melissa Webster, research director at IDC. “The ability to tie requirements to costs, risks and resources is essential to improving productivity and quality in an increasingly complex and business-driven development environment.”
The planning and estimation capabilities within CaliberRM will benefit multiple roles within the software development cycle, from managers through testers and developers. Some of these benefits include:
— Linking project scope, schedule and cost, resource allocation and risk management so when one variable changes a user can predict how other variables are affected
— Improving up-front budgeting and planning so users can determine acceptable degrees of risk, likelihood of meeting deadlines or budget, and the impact on other projects
— Adjusting project scope on-the-fly to determine impact on deadlines and resources
— Ensuring that QA activities are accounted for in development schedules
— Preparing in advance for project delivery via defect modeling and prediction
— Reducing workload stress by assuring projects are planned according to realistic time schedules
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