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| Author: | Connolly, T. Dean, D. |
| Title: | Decomposed versus holistic estimates of effort required for software writing tasks. |
| Journal: | Management Science
1997 : JUL, VOL. 43:7, p. 1029-1045 |
| Index terms: | DECISION ANALYSIS COMPUTER PROGRAMMING TIME STUDY PROBABILITY |
| Language: | eng |
| Abstract: | The authors examine decision analysis' central "decomposition principle" in the context of worktime estimates of software writers. Two experiments examined the abilities of advanced programming students to estimate how long they would take to complete specific software projects. They estimated their own work times both for entire projects and for their constituent subtasks. Estimates showed varying degrees of overoptimism and overpessimism but all were much too tight, with almost half of actual outcome falling in the 1 % tails of estimated distributions. This overtightness was unaffected by task decomposition, question wording, question order, or training in estimation. The findings suggest that the best level of decomposition ar which to elicit worktime estimates may depend on task, judge, and elicitation method. |
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