Quantifying the Quality of Trend Lines

• US 20140222488A1
• Filed: 02/07/2013
• Published: 08/07/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 02/07/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Gifford, Wesley M., Ratakonda, Krishna, Zhou, Nianjun, Engel, Carl, Rahenkamp, Craig A.
• Granted Patent: US 9,218,582 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7.23
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06313 Resource planning in a project environment

Abstract

Techniques, apparatus and articles of manufacture for quantifying the quality of trend lines. A method includes defining a collection of reference data sets derived from multiple historical projects in a similar subject area as the target project, defining one or more indicators of data set applicability to a target project estimation, said defining based on multiple characteristics of the target project, evaluating applicability of each of the reference data sets based on the one or more indicators, and identifying one or more of the reference data sets as applicable for use in the target project estimation.

Claims

1. A method for evaluating applicability of a data set for a target project estimation, the method comprising:

defining a collection of reference data sets derived from multiple historical projects in a similar subject area as the target project;

defining one or more indicators of data set applicability to a target project estimation, said defining based on multiple characteristics of the target project;

evaluating applicability of each of the reference data sets based on the one or more indicators; and

identifying one or more of the reference data sets as applicable for use in the target project estimation;

wherein at least one of the steps is carried out by a computer device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said defining a collection of reference data sets comprises determining sufficiency for one or more historical projects for inclusion in the collection of reference data sets.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said defining one or more indicators comprises extracting project characteristics from a database.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said defining one or more indicators comprises incorporating input from an estimator component and/or a subject matter expert.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein said input comprises information pertaining to one or more aspects of a domain relevant to the target project.

6. The method of claim 1, comprising:

defining a metric in connection with the one or more indicators.

7. The method of claim 1, comprising:

determining a measure of uncertainty for each of the reference data sets.

8. The method of claim 7, comprising:

displaying the one or more applicable reference data sets with the one or more corresponding measures of uncertainty to a user.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said displaying comprises implementation of a color-coding scheme for depicting the one or more applicable reference data sets in light of the one or more corresponding measures of uncertainty.

10. The method of claim 1, comprising:

storing the one or more reference data sets identified as applicable for use in the target project estimation in a database.

11. The method of claim 1, comprising:

performing the target project estimation based on the one or more reference data sets identified as applicable.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein one of said one or more indicators represents coherence of target project environment variables in each of the reference data sets.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein said target project environment variables comprise one or more of industry, country, and primary language.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein one of said one or more indicators represents a degree of evenness of project size distribution.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein one of said one or more indicators represents a degree of uncertainty of each of the multiple data sets.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein one of said one or more indicators represents sufficiency of a total number of projects in each of the multiple data sets.

17. The method of claim 1, comprising:

defining a set of governance rules to be associated with the one or more indicators.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein said set of governance rules comprise rules based on characteristics of the target project and rules based on characteristics of an execution environment for which the target project estimation is to be carried out.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein rules based on characteristics of the target project comprise:

a rule matching a size-counting method;

a rule matching project size; and

a rule matching development environment and language.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein rules based on characteristics of the execution environment comprise:

a rule based on project duration;

a rule based on project resources; and

a rule based on project scope.

21-25. -25. (canceled)