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This is a summary table of the estimation techniques from Steve McConnell’s Software Estimation. If you need to compare different estimation techniques quickly, this table is a good quick reference to use in combination with the book.

I recently picked up a copy of Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art.

Software Estimation provides a comprehensive guide to the universe of software estimation. Introductory chapters talk about the fundamentals of software estimation and the problem it solves. The later chapters are a catalog of estimation techniques. Each category of techniques is summarised with a guide to how accurate they are, when it is appropriate to use them, and what it is that they estimate.

Soon after buying Software Estimation a quite serious debate sprung up at work about software sizing techniques and how software size estimates may be used and abused. Without going to go into detail about work it was an exploration of different size estimation techniques and under what circumstances it is possible to make meaningful comparisons of software productivity.

After a couple of hours of digging through a couple of books including Capers Jones’ Software Assessments, Benchmarks, and Best Practices and Software Estimation I had summarised the estimation techniques chapters in Software Estimation into a quick-reference table to help me present my ideas and save my precious book from dying from referencing fatigue. I thought that table might be useful for other owners of the text.

Emboldened by a Jeff Atwood post about a successful request for the Coding Horror graphic from Steve, I set about asking for permission to make the Software Estimation ready-reckoner available to a slightly wider audience. I brushed up the formatting of my Excel scratchings into something a little more respectable and emailed my request. Steve responded quickly with the right words to correctly assert copyright and permission to publish it here. Thanks Steve! I guess I’ll have to make the table into a T-Shirt and bumper sticker now.

Download the Excel spreadsheet here.

Updated to exhume the lede a little. h/t Alan!

The Windows XP Languge Bar is useful to many people. Once upon a time I accidentally turned it on. Noticing it a second time, hovering around my taskbar, I turned it off. Noticing it a second time I turned it off. Noticing it a third time I turned it off… Noticing it a fourth time I searched the Internet.

You can’t turn this toolbar off and make it stay off using the same method as other toolbars. Each time you restart Windows it comes back. It’s toolbar Groundhog Day.

Thank you Paul Stubbs for this:

To close the Language bar (using Classic view in Control Panel):

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Regional and Language Options.
2. On the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details.
3. Under Preferences, click Language Bar.
4. Deselect the Show the Language bar on the desktop check box.

It isn’t the registry setting I thought it might require, but it’s not far short in terms of non-obviousness and inconvenience.

Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald web site. Hat tip to Luke@work.

Not many people get by online without using Google for searching. Recently, and not so recently, Google has spent a lot of time releasing a whole slew of new applications, features, development kits, APIs and online tools.

What Bill Tancer at Hitwise found was that Google’s more recent offerings weren’t a drop in the ocean compared to the indispensable search capability. I’m a keen user of many of these tools, not least of which is Google Talk. This isn’t a review of the Google canon, I’m just here to show you the bookmark folder I use most in my browser:

Ideally I’d call this menu Web 2.0, or Web 3.0 or whatever version isn’t subject to copyright. It’s not all Google, but it’s the menu I’d take with me to a desert island. Err. If that desert island had good broadband Internet access, and web kiosks that support Google Browser Sync.

My one caveat is about the odd one out in this list (apart from Tada, Flickr and Bloglines, which are conspicuous for not being Google’s): Writely.

I have used Writely for some time infrequently. It has always looked like a good tool for collaborative document development or sophisticated end-user blog posting, but I’ve never found a time to use it for either purpose. It remains in my Googlystuff menu in the hope I’ll find a problem for it to solve but I’m not holding out a lot of hope.

I finally got around to replacing my experiment in reader clutter-tolerance with This.

This is Freshy from jide.fr. My early impressions are that it, just, rocketh.

As usual, tell me if you encounter unexplained phenomena.

Our poor cat Mia is nearly 17 years old. Why poor? She was diagnosed with rampant skin cancer on her nose and ear. After a period of observing just how rampant the cancer was we decided to take our vet’s advice and have her operated on.

Mia is home from surgery now after four days of recuperation. We knew this wasn’t going to be Hollywood-level plastic surgery, but it’s still a shock to see her as a nose-less cat. From the right angle you can avoid seeing that half her right ear is missing and pretend she’s still sweet and cuddly looking, but her new-look snout is more than a little intimidating. Our 3 year old had some fairly serious nightmares the night after we brought her home.

This post is to remember how she used to look when she had girlish good looks. Even after a litter of 5.