Benefit and Cost Periodized: Stretching Your Points

When you estimate the life cycle cost and benefit of your software product, your stakeholders should not only be assured that you will deliver value, but also be informed when that value is expected to manifest itself. Periodization is a common method for showing when a return of investment is expected, and one is often careful to express the present value of future cash (net present value) in such deliberations. This chapter shows how to carry out periodization using points. Periodized points then amount to plan templates that can be instantiated with monetary values according to most likely, bad-case, and good-case uncertainty assessments.