NDLI: Programming cost estimate: Is it reasonable?

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Session 2A: Presentation—software development paradigm

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Error recovery in systems of communicating processes.

Exception handling: Formal specification and systematic program construction

Diagnostic system for distributed software: A relational database approach

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Multifaceted distributed systems specification using processes and event synchronization

EDMAS: A locally distributed mail system

Resource controller tasks in ADA: Their structure and semantics

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A spiral approach to software engineering project management education

A cooperative approach to software development by application engineers and software engineers

Fifteen years of psychology in software engineering: Individual differences and cognitive science

Session 4B: Programming environments I

PDAS: An assistant for detailed design and implementation of programs

Steps to an advanced ada programming environment

Maiday: An environment for guided programming with a definitional language

Session 5A: Cost and Productivity Measures

Power: A tool for quantitative evaluation of software project effectiveness

Productivity factors and programming environments

Programming cost estimate: Is it reasonable?

Session 5B: Programming environments II

Interactive system for structured program production

A large system evaluation of SREM

A tour through cedar

Session 6A: User interfaces

MGEN - a generator for menu driven programs

SYNCRO: A dataflow command shell for the lilith/modula computer

Software engineering for user interfaces

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Comparison of concurrent software reliability models

A logarithmic poisson execution time model for software reliability measurement

A program complexity metric based on data flow information in control graphs

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An evaluation of required element testing strategies

Perturbation testing for computation errors

Assessing a class of software tools

An algebra for data flow anomaly detection

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Characteristic program complexity measures

A discriminant metric for module cohesion

Integrated program measurement and documentation tools

Quantifying software designs

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Pecan: Program development systems that support multiple views

Table: Object oriented editing of complex structures

Practical applications of a syntax directed program manipulation environment

Session 8B: Panel—software engineering and social responsibility

Session 9A: Knowledge-based software engineering

Knowledge-based communication processes in software engineering

PROUST: Knowledge-based program understanding

A knowledge base for supporting an intelligent program editor

Session 9B: Design methods

The data transform programming method: An example for file processing problems

Communication system design using ADA

The modular structure of complex systems

Session 10A: Formal specifications

Abstract models of dialogue concepts

Formal specification and development of an ada compiler - a vdm case study

Application of axiomatic methods to a specification analyser

Session 10B: Programming methodologies

A new program structure to improve accuracy and readability of pascal software

Functional programming and logical programming for the telegram analysis problem

Prototyping vs. specifying: A multi-project experiment

Session 11A: Verification

Structure charts and program correctness proofs

A system for classifying program verification methods: Assigning meanings to program verification methods

Specification and verification of distributed systems using prolog interpreted petri nets.

Session 11B: Development models and methods

A method of large-scale software development

On what exactly is going on when software is developed step-by-step

Three paradigms for developing information systems

Programming cost estimate: Is it reasonable?

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Boydston, Robert E.
Abstract	A basic concern when considering a programming cost estimate is its reasonableness. A statistical examination of over thirty completed products was conducted, using least square error methods, to develop an improved method for establishing a central value and an acceptable range of values for programming product cost estimates. Eight variables associated with the coding process, such as the number of lines of new and modified Basic Assembler Language and number of new modules, were found to be useful in developing reasonableness equations. Using regression equations developed from the variables, we developed reasonableness tests that compare the estimate prepared by the developer to the actual development effort applied to previous products. Insight also was gained about programmer productivity, the quality of code estimations, and the optimum number of lines of code per module. Estimates are usually based on the experience of the past. But whatever method is used, the main consideration is the error of estimate associated with that method. The basic question about any estimate is: how good is it? The current state of the art of the cost estimating of software projects evolved from the works of Walverton1 attempting to correlate the size of effort in person-months with the size of the product expressed in Thousand Lines of Source Code (KLOC). Large dispersion of data forced Walston and Felix2 to take into account additional variables such as programmer experience and the complexity of the application as well as over twenty variables. Putnam3 simplified staffing (life cycle curve) to a small and easily managed set of parameters that could be expressed in the form of nomograms. This paper contributes to the software cost estimation by identifying those variables of the product which were found to be governing: The importance of distinguishing higher level language Programming Language Systems (PLS) from low level Basic Assembler Language (BAL), the importance of recognizing the major increase of effort if code is modified rather than new code created. The magnitude of these differences is quantified. Finally in the analysis of the optional number of modules for a product, a balance is shown between the intramodule complexity and the intermodule complexity. Parametric data associated with program product development costs has been actively collected since mid-1976 by the Program Cost Estimating Department, now located at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory. This data represents the actual person-month resources used to match program development requirements. Products that were analyzed are a collection of classic IBM mainframe products: languages (such as Cobol, PL/I, APL), utilities (VSAM, OS utilities, sort, etc.), and data base products (IMS, Data Dictionary, etc.). These are “system programs” rather than applications. The range and median sizes of the products are shown in Table 1. Twenty six of the thirty products contain modified modules.
Starting Page	153
Ending Page	159
Page Count	7
File Format	PDF
ISBN	0818605286
ISSN	02705257
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1984-03-26
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Software

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