Cost Engineering Health Check

High quality cost estimating gives a business leader confidence to make rational financial decisions. Whether you are a business leader or a cost estimating manager, you have a vested interest in understanding whether you can depend on your organisation's ability to generate accurate cost forecasts and estimates. But how can business leaders have confidence that the cost information that they are being provided with is of high quality? How can a cost estimating manager be sure that their team is providing high quality cost information? QinetiQ's Cost Engineering Health Check is used as a capability benchmarking tool to identify improvement opportunities within their clients' cost estimating capability, enabling them to focus on areas that have the potential to increase their competitiveness. High quality estimating leads to accurate budgets, a reduced potential for cost growth, accurate evaluation of risk exposure, and the opportunity to implement effective earned value management (EVM). The Cost Engineering Health Check employs a standardised competency framework that considers all aspects of cost estimating capability, and provides an objective assessment against both best practice and the industry standard. This framework is based on QinetiQ's long established, tried and tested, Knowledge Based Estimating (KBE) philosophy comprising Data, Tools, People and Process, with additional consideration given to cultural and stakeholder assessments.

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use