Software Effort and Schedule Measurement: A Framework for Counting Staff-Hours and Reporting Schedule Information

Abstract : This report contains guidelines for defining, recording, and reporting staff-hours. In it we develop a framework for describing staff-hour definitions, and use that framework to construct operational methods for reducing misunderstandings in measurement results. We show how to employ the framework to resolve conflicting user needs, and we apply the methods to construct specifications for measuring staff-hours. We also address two different but related aspects of schedule measurement. One aspect concerns the dates of project milestones and deliverables, and the second concerns measures of progress. Examples of forms for defining and reporting staff-hour and schedule measurements are illustrated.