[100efforts] What Productivity Factor is and how should one use it?

This is a post on how to use our requirements management and efforts estimation tool and more precisely it is a discussion on what Productivity Factor is. It gives you a simple method of finding reasonable values to start with, in order to receive results that align with real life from the very beginning.

Productivity factor (PF) serves the purpose of translating Use Case points into man-hours. PF is a ratio of number of man-hours per use case point.

Needless to say that PF will be different for various teams and for various phases of a project. The more experienced and well managed team is the more effortless work is.

There are a number of empiric suggestions for choosing a PF value.

First of all, as suggested by industry experts, PF should be between 15 and 30.

Several studies has established a typical PF value of 20, that is why it is a default value for every release you create in 100effors.com

Use this approach to adjust PF for a specific project or phase of a project:

1. Count the number of environmental factor ratings of E1-E6 that are below 3 and the number of factor ratings of E7-E8 that are above 3.
2. If the total is 2 or less, then use 20 man-hours per UCP.
3. If the total is 3 or 4, use 28 man-hours per UCP.
4. If the total is 5 or more then consider restructuring the project team so that the numbers fall at least below 5. A value of 5 indicates that this project is at significant risk of failure with this team.

And for sure the most reliable method is your past experience. Compare estimated and actual efforts of completed projects/phases (100efforts.com   provides an easy tool for this) and perform adjustments of Productivity Factor for following releases accordingly.

How to set a Productivity Factor in 100efforts.com:

1. Open your project of interest
2. Be sure that you have already created at least one release for the project
3. Go to “Efforts” tab
4. Click on release name under “Use case points estimation” section and you’ll be landed on the “Summary” page
5. Click “Productivity factor (PF)” link to enter your value.

References:

• Estimating Software Via Use Cases 
• Project Estimation with Use Case Points