Reducing estimation uncertainty with continuous assessment

Pongtip Aroonvatanaporn, Chatchai Sinthop, Barry Boehm
2010 Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM international conference on Automated software engineering - ASE '10  
Accurate software cost and schedule estimations are essential especially for large software projects. However, once the required efforts have been estimated, little is done to recalibrate and reduce the uncertainty of the initial estimates. To address this problem, we have developed and used a framework to continuously monitor the software project progress and readjust the estimated effort utilizing the Constructive Cost Model II (COCOMO II) and the Unified CodeCount Tool developed by the
more » ... sity of Southern California. As a software project progresses, we gain more information such as complexity, architecture resolution, and people capability as well as the actual source lines of code developed and effort spent. This information is then used to assess and re-estimate the effort required to complete the remainder of the project. As the estimations of effort grow more accurate with less uncertainty, the quality and goal of project outcome can be assured within the available resources. The paper thus also provides and analyzes empirical data on how projects evolve within the familiar software "cone of uncertainty."
doi:10.1145/1858996.1859065 dblp:conf/kbse/AroonvatanapornSB10 fatcat:h7ndl4ubo5hwraciv2mwcqog6q