We care about doing software work well and efficiently
We look at software work from first principles, with no BS:
Size matters – the bigger it is the more likely it is to fail.
Requirements matter – they are the blueprint for success.
Scopemaster was formed in 2018 but its roots started long before that. After many years in software, the team noticed a lack of transparency in software work and excessive problems caused by two key factors:
- Poor requirements.
- Lack of suitable metrics.
Knowledge of size + better requirements = lower risk
In 2013 Colin started a journey of trying to resolve these problems, first with a basic online functional sizing tool and then in the 2016 the investigations into automated sizing began. The product that we now know as ScopeMaster® has taken a considerable amount of effort to create and refine to become the powerful tool that we have today.
Our focus remains on delivering as much value to the software team and management by helping to address these two problems. And we are proud of building a world class tool that reduces waste and brings greater transparency and certainty on virtually all software work.
If you share our passion we’d like to talk to you. We are busy growing the group of like-minded folks.
Responsible, transparent use of AI
We believe that artificial intelligence must be used in a responsible and transparent way. Only through this transparency can humans remain the ultimate decision makers. Currently we:
- ScopeMaster makes suggestions and recommendations, but never decides for you.
- Only use Natural Language Processing based on fixed language model.
ScopeMaster Ltd the company, was established in 2018. The company was formed to improve and market the invention of the automated analysis tool that shares the same name. We are based in the UK and have representation across a growing number of locations around the world. If you would like to join us on this very exciting journey, please get in touch.
ScopeMaster provides software requirements analytics that help software delivery leaders deliver software projects faster with more certainty.
Time Saved per user story
The Team
Colin Hammond
Founder, CEO
Colin has over 30 years of IT industry experience. By first understanding the principles of software development work, it is possible to identify techniques and metrics that actually work. It was this insight that stimulated him to develop the ground breaking tool ScopeMaster that automates hitherto manually intensive work.
Some of Colin’s favourite sayings:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible but no more simple”
“The maths of testing early stacks up; entering a sprint with poor user stories may be agile but it’s not lean” (Dr Simon Wright)
“Great things are achieved by small groups of highly competent people”
Professor Sylvie Trudel
Training
“COSMIC Sizing is at the heart of responsible software management”
Professor Sylvie Trudel is at the heart of the COSMIC Sizing community and has been teaching in the methodology to students and industry for many years.
Dr Simon Wright
Consulting and Training
“Entering a sprint with unrefined user stories may be agile but it’s certainly not lean”
Simon has spent over 20 years working on software requirements users stories and system specifications. He brings an incredible depth of knowledge to educating and guiding clients to make the most of the potential of ScopeMaster.
Wayne Rogers
Business Development
Wayne is our engine for getting the word out, developing our sales pipeline and ensuring customers are succeeding.
Jonathan Elder
Sales and Marketing
Jonathan leads our digital marketing and sales activities.
Vicky Lorriman
Digital Marketing
Vicky runs the digital side of ScopeMaster’s marketing activities.
Advisors
Richard Dannan
Advisor
Richard is an enterprise architect with extensive experience. He brings practical technical and commercial advice to the team.
Lonnie Franks
Advisor/Consultant
Lonnie has over 50 years in IT and has seen it all before. He brings incredible insight and experience to the team.
Rupert Robin
Advisor/investor
Rupert has over 25 years in business and software. He brings many skills including high energy, sales experience, clarity of thought and focus to the board.
ScopeMaster® is a cloud-hosted tool for improving the quality, estimation and delivery of software projects. ScopeMaster® analyses written requirements or user stories to deliver insight, exposing potential defects, improvement suggestions and functional size estimates that can be used to make your software projects more successful.
ScopeMaster’s automated analyser uses AI and numerous other automated analysis steps that have been designed to bring insight, expose problems and estimate size. Using ScopeMaster®, you can achieve requirements QA productivity improvements of up to 20x.
Scopemaster® has been developed in the UK and is owned by ScopeMaster Ltd. The automated analysis performed by ScopeMaster is unique and is subject to International patent application (PCT/GB2019/050478) originally from February 2018. ScopeMaster® is a registered trademark 3291993.
A note from the author:
Thank you for your interest in ScopeMaster.
I set out to create a tool that would help me as a software project manager with the job of measuring software size. I learned about COSMIC function points and wanted to use them instead of IFPUG FP which I had been using successfully for many years. It turns out that COSMIC was an excellent choice and then, by accident, I created a tool that is very effective in finding defects in requirements.
Nearly a year later, it is so exciting to see analysts and project managers getting such significant and rapid benefits from using ScopeMaster®. The software development industry has had such a poor reputation for predictable, on-time, on budget projects. I am convinced that ScopeMaster has the potential to make a notable contribution to improving the reputation of software project deliveries.
I am very grateful for the advice and wisdom of experts who have helped me validate ScopeMaster®, especially Lonnie Franks, Charles Symons, Professor Alain Abran and Bernard Lonedix. I am also indebted to Capers Jones whose books have inspired me on this journey.
Colin Hammond, November 2018
“This is really neat….other than general readability, it’s the only static analysis tool for requirements that I have ever seen”
At the University of Dayton Research Institute, we pride ourselves on delivering; high-quality work, on time and budget, and having total transparency with our clients. ScopeMaster gives us a powerful tool to not only quickly and efficiently price our efforts based on industry standards but also add a new layer of customer interaction through its reports.
I would be shocked if this didn’t improve development team productivity by at least 10%.
This is of great potential benefit for the requirements community as well as the sizing community. I share your excitement.
Another benefit of your tool is that, not only does it interpret the requirements but it actually writes the detail specifications, which can then be used as test cases.
It is much harder to remove defects from requirements and design that it is from source code. But if those defects are not removed prior to testing, testing itself cannot find them.
Scopemaster doesn’t just help find the requirements defects but helps educate authors to prevent them in future!
Its amazing that you have come up with the right set of functional requirements.
Using ScopeMaster, not only I did I find and fix 150 defects in 2 days, it was actually fun to use!
“…I want to use it on any future projects, whether agile or waterfall, to tighten up the requirements as early as possible. To me it’s a no brainer”
“I think it’s amazing, it does so many things. Its a great tool!”
Analysis Hyperautomated
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