Role Names

Introduction

We have adopted the standard term role to describe the concept of the labor category or skill required to perform some work in a project. This concept is useful in software estimation since different roles have different costs and so the overall project cost is affected by the mix of roles required to execute it. Project managers are interested in this concept since different roles have different availabilities, i.e. the schedule of a project may be affected by the availability of people who are able to fill certain roles.

Standard Roles

The following table summarizes the standard roles used by Galorath and QSM as illustrated in the sample data they provided. In order to reach a common set of roles, we have split some roles that were previously combined by either vendor. The Galorath Data Prep role mapped, imperfectly, to the QSM Documentation/Publications and Support Staff roles. The QSM Technical Analyst/Designer role mapped the Galorath SW Reqs and Design roles.

Furthermore, we have adopted the uniform grammatical convention of using nouns that describe the role, e.g. tester, as opposed to the work performed by individuals who occupy the role, e.g. test or testing.

Accounting Practices

The absence of the Support Technician role in the Galorath sample data led to a discussion of how effort was accounted for. Galorath adopts the practice of only accounting for effort that is billed to clients. In this practice, the work performed by a support technician would be built-in to the labor rates. In constrast, QSM accounts for this effort directly. For the purposes of standardization, we should adopt a uniform practice. The following principles are proposed:

• Effort should describe the work performed by the people who are assigned to the project, either for the full project or only for portions of it. There should be a direct correspondence between effort and staffing level, i.e. effort is the integral of staffing level with respect to time.
• Other work performed in aid of the project, but done by people who are not counted in its staffing level, should be included in the cost but not the effort. The cost may be represented as additional unique one-time costs incurred by the project, or may be incorporated in the labor rates along with other overhead costs such as rent, software licences, hardware depreciation, etc. The labor rate is therefore composed of the salary for the role plus other overhead costs, which may include work performed to provide infrastructure support for the project. This labor rate is referred to as the fully burdened labor rate.
• In the case where a development organization is performing work that is billed to a client, the estimate should distinguish between cost and price. Cost is what the organization spends to perform the work whereas price is what the organization charges the client for the work.

Comments

Please add your comments here:

Captured this well Arthur. One comment - in the discussion last week, I thought the Galorath Support Staff item was described as being a catch-all for roles not captured in the other defined roles, and that these were for identifiable people associated with a specif ic project rather than in a cross-project infrastructure or "overhead" type of team. The OSLC Support Technician label seems like a specific technical role rather than a catch-all label. Perhaps something like Additional Staff might be more descriptive?

-- ScottBosworth - 17 Aug 2009

Scott, yes, they said Support Staff did miscellaneous work. I tried to pick a name that wouldn't get confused with Customer Support. Please suggest a more descriptive role name.

-- ArthurRyman - 18 Aug 2009