When planning a new project, someone always asks the question: “And where are any actual data from our previous projects?” Another question may also arise: “What is the relationship between the plan and the measurement data?” The plan is useful only if it diverges from reality by no more than +/- 20%. Measurement data is useful only if they are applicable to a project whose conditions are similar to those of the previous project when these data were received.
Imagine that you own a small ocean yacht and are going to sail from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to the Bahamas. You would have to pick up maps of the Atlantic coast with a display of sea routes, depths, ports and lighthouses. You would need to choose a route and count the travel time, taking into account the speed of the yacht and any speed limits specified in the navigation charts. When planning, it is necessary to perform a number of calculations, taking into account the rate at which various supplies are used. You should decide how many people could be on the trip. Intermediate results, such as the number of travel days, determine the number of portions got at breakfast, lunch or dinner to feed people being on board. In accordance with this plan, you will reserve the appropriate amount of fuel, drinking water, food and other supplies. This information is reflected in the navigation and food plans, in the ship’s declaration and route map.
While sailing, the captain of the yacht will check with the navigation plan, recording such measurement data as speed and current heading. Based on this data, he calculates the time when to start looking for a specific port or beacon. The purpose of this actual measurement data set is to associate the navigation plan with known route points. By tracking these measurement data and comparing them with control points, the captain can answer the most typical questions, such as “Have not we lost track?” or “Have we departed from the schedule?”.
In the case of software development projects, the planning process consists of combining the selected development life cycle and its stages (navigation maps and route), a set of functional requirements (the length of the journey in miles), the number of lines of code that must be created per hour the specific speed of the yacht, expressed in miles / h), the schedule of staff loading by months (route) and intermediate project completion dates (beacons and ports).
During the development, the project manager records the actual data, for example, data obtained during the current week on the number of use cases, the number of lines of code, the number of detected and corrected errors, and the percentage of completed test cases to their total number. In addition, the software development manager looks at the project plan and its timetable to be able to answer the typical question: “Will we be able to meet project deadlines?” So, it is always reasonable to turn to qa company for help throughout the entire development life cycle. Quality assurance experts ensure that any software meets the established top quality and real-world standards.