Event program

The event program is as followed:

15:30 – 16:00 Welcome with coffee

16:00 – 18:00 IT Cost management: How to adapt software metrics in the Agile world to become more predictable and transparant?

• Pieter Jansen and Jacek Pachocki will show you how NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) is using software sizing in an agile world.
• Harold van Heeringen (IDC Metri) will share his experience on how to use objective metrics as a basis for agile cost estimation and monitoring and will show which minor adjustments to the usual agile way of working are necessary to do this.
• Richard Sweer (Finidy) will givea brief presentation about output-based performance management for agile teams. He has developed his own model for this that is now being further developed as a new NEN NPR/ISO TR standard
• The Nesma Counting Committee will present their their views on functional sizing in the various, new, development methodologies, including Agile

18:00 – 20:00 Network drinks, drinks and bites

Preceeding the event, the Nesma member meeting (ALV) will be held, from 14:30 till 15:30 o’clock (only for Nesma members).

Presentation: “How NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) is using software sizing in an agile world”

During this presentation, you will learn how NCI Agency:

• Use software sizing;
• Use these metrics combined with a parametric approach to make informed decisions that lead to greater predictability and transparency;
• Overcome common challenges and pitfalls associated with software metrics in an Agile world

By attending this presentation, you will gain valuable insights and practical tips.

Presented by:

Pieter Jansen

• Senior Cost Professional
• 23+ years of experience in Defence (Air Force, Army, MoD and NATO) as an auditor, controller, chief weapons systems analyses and cost professional;
• With NATO since 2017;
• Education: Erasmus University Rotterdam and Royal Military Academy
• Experience in cost modelling using parametric and analytical models like models for spares optimisation.

 Jacek Pachocki

• Senior Cost Professional
• 25+ years of experience in Engineering Companies as an engineer, project and risk manager, cost professional;
• Infrastructure, electronic and mechanical systems for tunnels, airport systems, metro systems, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), Road Charging systems etc.;
• With NATO since 2017;
• Experience in cost modelling using parametric and probabilistic approaches;
• Specializing in Software Intensive Projects (SIPs).

Presentation: “How to use objective metrics as a basis for agile cost estimation and monitoring”

 Managing the IT function in management and development is more important than ever. It is wrongly assumed that agile, DevOps or multidisciplinary teams do not need planning, cost estimation, or leadership and that their performance cannot be measured or that this is at the expense of agility or execution power.

The opposite is true: in practice, many projects and programs are almost blind, especially at a time when their size is increasing, and the complexity is humanly incalculable. Daily, management face the hefty bill of uncontrollable journeys “beyond the point of no return”. Lack of objective insights into actual team performance often results in low predictability and low accuracy of cost estimates.

Objectively substantiated insights are necessary to know what value is delivered by development teams and how that translates into size and quality. Measurement and data collection play a key role in this.

The measurement data is used to recalibrate long term effort, duration and cost estimates based on actual productivity delivered. It will show the way senior management can again understand the progress of certain initiatives, enabling them to show active attention and direction, resulting in increased predictability, more value creation for the given budget and better organizational results.

 Key take-aways and learning insights:

• For many organizations, the value creation function depends on the value delivered by the IT organization, e.g., delivering more functionality for the users or customers may lead to a competitive advantage.
• Most organizations have shifted to an agile way of working, which in theory should lead to as much value as possible in short iterations.
• However, IDC research shows software Development using an agile way-of-working can easily spin out of control if not managed well.
• Many organizations are struggling how to estimate agile development. Often the budget is fixed (fixed teams), so no estimation needed. But how much functionality will be ready when the budget has been spent? And is that enough? Cost Estimation of Agile software development is about estimating the functionality ready at a certain moment in time.
• Cost Monitoring is about tracking the actuals against plan. Agile software development can be predictable when using the right metrics and the short feedback loops in agile favor the predictability as it becomes possible to constantly compare actuals against the estimate.
• However, a few adjustments to the usual agile way of working are necessary to bring these insights. I’ll show which adjustments.

Presented by:

Harold van Heeringen (IDC Metri)

Harold van Heeringen graduated from the university of Groningen (the Netherlands) in business economics in 1997 after which he worked for IT service provider Sogeti for 17 years as a senior consultant software metrics / software cost estimation. In 2015, he moved to sourcing advice and benchmarking services provider Metri, where he works as a principal consultant and practice lead for IT Intelligence services, including Estimation & Performance Measurement and Agile Value Management services.

Next to working in IDC Metri, he is active in several not-for-profit organizations that are active in this space: Harold has been president of the not-for-profit International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) from 2011 until 2019 and is still an active director in the board of directors. Harold is also board member of Nesma, the international organization focusing on functional size measurement and cost estimation. In Nesma, he is responsible for international partnerships and cooperation.

Presentation: “Output-based performance management for Agile teams”

Richard Sweer will give a brief presentation about output-based performance management for agile teams. Richard will indicate that there is currently no model in the market to measure this in an objective way. He has developed his own model for this that is now being further developed as a new NEN NPR/ISO TR standard. This model has been tested in one of the largest output-based offshore projects in recent years. A project of more than 250 man-year.

Take-aways:

• It’s all about steering on outcome/business value.
• That chosen business functionality (output) usually has a high positive correlation with outcome/business value.
• We currently have no objective international standards to measure outcome, but we do have one for measuring output.
• An Agile team always influences the amount of output, but not always on the outcome/business value.
• That a new NEN NPR/ISO TR standard is being developed to measure output based performance management based on 4KPIs (Happier, Faster, Cheaper, Better).

What insights do we gain?

• That SAFe, Scrum@Scale, LeSS, AgilePM and DORA only gives a minimal answer how output can be measured in an objective way.
• Added value of the use of Functional Size Measurement in Agile Teams to do output based performance management
• What the objective, scope and target group of the new NEN standard and a glimpse into the model.

Presented by:

Richard Sweer (Finidy)

After completing his IT studies, Richard started as a developer and progressed to project manager. He now has more than 25 years experience as a project manager. Richard has extensive knowledge of and experience in realising and implementing customised software and packages at medium-sized and international companies. He has a great command of applying and implementing innovative technologies, methods and metrics; as a result, he feels at home in complex (ICT) environments and can often act quickly and decisively due to his broad ICT knowledge and experience. Richard provides clear and transparent insight into lead times and costs of ICT projects by using software metrics.