"We are making QSM tools standard throughout
the corporation"
-- Pam Martin, CACI, Vice President
"I will not hesitate to recommend your
tools and services to other software engineering firms...They
are first class products."
-- Mark Leaman, SRA
"Best Practice...Use of the QSM toolset
is now an integrated part of our software process at H&BC...Your
continuous support and consultation is critical to our success."
-- Hamid Ghezvat, Honeywell Home & Building Control
Division
I'm the Director of Delivery Assurance for a 5,000
person Applications
Services Division within CSC, servicing over 50 clients in the
commercial
outsourcing market. I have worked with QSM for over 14 years and
rely
heavily on their products and support. SLIM Estimate is the
key reference estimating tool for my division Sr. Management.
If a project
manager brings any other input - such as their personal expert
judgement -
it has to match with SLIM results or division management is not
ready to
commit to the budget and schedule for our customers. Using
the QSM
products, along with the other process rigor we apply, has helped
us to
deliver 98% on budget and 97% on schedule year after year.
The products are exceptional, but the service we
get when we call is even
better. Whether our project managers and estimators run into an
unusual
situation or are just reaching for a deeper understanding of the
tools,
QSM spends as much time as needed with my staff, and provides
additional
references, approaches, new insights every time. We have not yet
gone to
them without having help in solving the immediate problem. This
is
critical in the pressure we are under to meet deadlines to deliver
to our
customers. The training provided is excellent, practical, and
useable
immediately the day after. They bend over backwards in helping
us get to a
place where we can both understand how to use to tools, but also
where not
to use the tools.
I've been a user of their products for a long time
and watched how committed they are to improving an already great
set of products year after
year. The current set, version 6.0, is simply in a class by itself
compared to the competitors - and they already were in that place
before the upgrade.
John G. Tittle
Director, ASD Delivery Assurance
Computer Sciences Corporation
"I have been a SLIM User for about seven years
at three Fortune 500
companies, all with different business applications. Starting
with SLIM- Control for project tracking and oversight, followed
by SLIM Estimate
and SLIM-Metrics, I have personally seen projects save time, money,
and
effort through the visibility SLIM tools provide into the software
development process.
I could list dozens of scenarios when the use of
SLIM tools helped me avoid catastrophic failures. The most significant
examples are related to "slip rates". On one program,
SLIM-Control helped us realize that we were seeing a schedule
slip of two months for every elapsed calendar month. If left undiscovered,
we would not have known that we were on a path to NEVER FINISH!
In the reliability (quality) area, we tracked both the date we
expected to meet our quality target (Mean Time To Defect), as
well as the forecasted product reliability at the promised delivery
date.
In most every case, the quality we expected to provide
at the committed delivery date was not forecasted to occur. Knowing
this gave us ample lead time to:
1) coordinate and collaborate with our customers and manage their
expectations
2) initiate internal analyses to uncover and address various project
deficiencies.
I have experienced first-hand the tremendous asset the SLIM tool
suite
has become on so many projects. SLIM tools provide users with
the ability to
be more proactive, positively impressing the boss and the
customer simultaneously! I have come to consider the use of SLIM
a
"Critical Success Factor".
Jim Kirk
Managment & Data Systems
Lockheed-Martin Corporation
"When planning new software developments,
we use SLIM-Estimate in conjunction with our expert-generated
estimates to develop preliminary schedules and staffing plans.
After we enter just a few key project parameters, SLIM-Estimate
gives us a view of staffing level/release date tradeoffs. We get
valuable insights by comparing our project solutions with industry
trendline data and our own historical project execution data.
QSM product quality is excellent – we haven’t
experienced any unexplained hang-ups or quirky operation. The
user interface is highly intuitive and nearly every aspect of
the product is configurable. And QSM product training is top-notch
– thorough (but not laborious), the instructors “know
their stuff” and tailor the class to students’ needs,
and the presentation materials are easy to follow. Lastly, QSM
product support is superb – we can always reach an actual
person who provides prompt, courteous, correct answers to our
questions. QSM actively solicits product feedback, is open to
custom development work, and even provided user manuals in electronic
format for our convenience. Great company … great products!"
Project Manager
Major PLC Manufacturer
(anonymous by request)
"Every month we have an EDS-wide Estimating
conference call. We invited (two QSM support personnel) to attend
our June meeting to field questions. Their knowledge and expertise
were paramount to a successful meeting. What impressed me even
more was the fact that they knew virtually all of the people on
the call, from around the world. Typically, they both offered
additional service to some of the participants, and have since
followed up with those people. Our Account Manager at QSM provides
the same high level of service.
This is nothing new: we are used to this level
of service from QSM. Customer service and quality products have
been the hallmark of my 5
years of using SLIM. The staff at QSM are accessibl e and eager
to assist.
I know they have spent many hours researching requests for us."
Duane Shields
Process Improvement Team
EDS US Government Solutions