Project effort estimation : Or, when size makes a difference

The motivation fox this work is derived from the current interest in speeding up development schedules: A key implication of the shift to more rapid development methods is the growing emphasis on fixed time and fixed effort delivered during such projects. However there appears to be little work that addresses the impacts of dealing with bound effort levels. The result of binding time and effort is to deprive project managers of the normal parameters that are used in tradeoffs. The paper attempts to introduce a quantitative analytical framework for modeling effort-boxed development in order to uncover the effects on the overall development effort and the potential leverage that can be derived from incremental delivery in such projects. Models that predict product size as an exponential function of the development effort are used in the paper to explore the relationships between effort and the number of increments, thereby providing new insights into the economic impact of incremental approaches to effort-boxed software projects

A DESIGN PERSPECTIVE ON POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: THE FALLACIES OF MISPLACED PRESCRIPTION

Implementation has been used to try to explain too much, particularly that policy formulation should be oriented around implementation. The concentration on implementation has added little to our theoretical understanding of policymaking. Implementation studies have taken either "The Horrors of War" or "The Search for Theory" views. The latter has four major views, none of which is adequate. The best approach is to treat implementation as only one of a number of conditions which must be fulfilled for successful policymaking. The design perspection, explained in the paper, is the best approach for this. Copyright 1987 by The Policy Studies Organization.