John Morgan 02b Technical Research Paper March 30, 2014 COCOMO Summary | Introduction: Estimating the cost of software projects is inherently difficult. Cost estimation is standard in every business and industry. Many industries are able to accurately estimate costs of production, or service, software development is not one of those industries. Due to continual change in software application domain, personnel, and stakeholders, cost estimation becomes one of the most difficult problems in software development. Although it may seem like a simple task to estimate a software projects cost, in reality it is very challenging and difficult. COCOMO stands for Constructive Cost Model, which is an algorithm that helps predict the cost of software projects [4]. Summary | History: Barry Boehm is a professor of computer science and software engineering at USC. Boehm is the creator of many advancements in the software engineering industry including, but not limited to MBASE, Spiral, Theory W, and COCOMO. In 1981 Boehm published a book titled ‘Software Engineering Economics’, where COCOMO was first introduced, and described. COCOMO-I was created to improve the financial decisions made in regards to software projects. After its initial public presentation COCOMO-I became a popular foundation for cost estimation models [2]. Boehm researched, and discovered trends in previous software projects, using the results as a foundation for estimation modeling. At the time Boehm was working for TRW where he lead many evolutions in software productivity tools. COCOMO was one of those evolutions, but as newer and improved tools evolved COCOMO-I, started to loose its power, and COCOMO-II was created [2]. This new take on the original COCOMO, paved the wa... ... middle of paper ... ...ftware process maturity on COCOMO II’s effort estimation from CMMI perspective," Research, Innovation and Vision for the Future, 2008. RIVF 2008. IEEE International Conference on , vol., no., pp.255,262, 13-17 July 2008 doi: 10.1109/RIVF.2008.4586364 URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4586364&isnumber=4586319 5) Tim Menzies, Dan Port, Zhihao Chen, and Jairus Hihn. 2005. Simple software cost analysis: safe or unsafe?. SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes 30, 4 (May 2005), 1-6. DOI=10.1145/1082983.1083170 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1082983.1083170 6) Yukio Miyazaki and Kuniaki Mori. 1985. COCOMO evaluation and tailoring. In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Software engineering (ICSE '85). IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 292-299. URL: http://delivery.acm.org.byui.idm.oclc.org/10.1145/320000/319657/p292-miyazaki.pdf
As a result, systems that are put in place for ABC are updated infrequently and the model’s estimates of process, product and customer costs soon become inaccurate. In addition, the complexity of actual operations tends to get overlooked by traditional ABC models.
Roybal, H., Baxendale, S.J., and Gupta, M., (1999), “Using Activity-Based Costing and Theory of Constraints to Guide
Information and Software Technology Years 7–10: Advice on Programming and Assessment. (2003). Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_sc/pdf_doc/info_soft_tech_710_support.pdf
Santana, E., Tanaka, S., Guerra, e., Fernandes, C. and Silveira, F. (2009) “Towards a Practical Approach to Testing Pointcut Descriptors With JQuati”, In Latin American Workshop on Aspect-Oriented Software Development, 3, Fortaleza.
Open source vs. proprietary: Both have advantages By John Carroll, Special to ZDNet, Retrieved May 19, 2008 from [http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,2000061733,39148762,00.htm]
If done right, I believe that all of the costs can be allocated to each of the three products through both direct and overhead costs. The only direct costs that are being included currently are labor and manufacturing costs. I broke up overhead into overhead based off direct labor and overhead based on units sold.
Process costing System is an accounting expression which describes one method to determine the manufacturing costs to the units manufactured . Processing is typically used when similar units are mass produced. Also process costing system is a type of accounting process costing which is used to determine the cost of a produced inventory. Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) defines process costing as " The costing method applicable where goods or services result from a sequence of continuous or repetitive operations or processes. Costs are average over the units produced during the period, being initially charged to the operation or process "( College Accounting Coach, 2007). Process costing is more important and appropriate for all businesses producing identical products during which production is an ongoing flow. Toyota is on the of the major companies in the world that used well-known new philosophic management to produce identical products using process costing system.
While developing a software many complex activities are required which in turn have dependencies along them. Large software projects require the involvement of programmers, documentation specialists, program managers, architects, database analysts, system analysts, , and trainers and last but not the least testers. Along with their independent responsibilities these persons are also responsible to maintain and keep a check on the software system quality as well.
Rishinek, A., 1983. Control Aspects of Standard Costing: Variance Analysis, Inflation Adjustment, The Learning Curve and their Computer Applications. Managerial Finance, 9(1), pp. 14-18.
Project managers must take cost estimates seriously if they want to complete software projects within budget constraints. After developing a good resource requirements list, project managers and their software development teams must develop several estimates of the costs for these resources. There are several different tools and techniques available for accomplishing good cost estimation.
Others feel that ABC would be more widespread in industry if it were marketed better by the cost accounting profession itself [1]. As the dust has settled, ABC has turned out to be less a revolutionary technique than a useful refinement to proven systems. The costs of products and services must be accurate, or management can be misled. Decisions... ...
...pplied. Cost estimation and analysis could ultimately determine major decisions in both the business and political worlds today, and play a crucial role even in our day to day lives. Through activity based costing one is able to see what areas need improvement and also whether or not a business will be successful after considering all the factors. These tools are very powerful in drawing wise conclusions from cost analysis and can be a priceless tool to have even in the field of engineering.
Cost estimating within literature has found to have slightly different definitions. Ogunlana (1989) states that a cost estimate is there only to aid the future design of a project, this description contains little mention of the process used to get to that estimate....
Dell’Isola, Alphonse and Stephen Kirk. Life Cycle Costings for Design Professionals. New York, McGraw-Hill. 1981, Print.
Testing One Two. By: Nisley, Ed. Dr. Dobb's Journal: Software Tools for the Professional Programmer, May2003, Vol. 28 Issue 5, p80, 4p, 1c; (AN 9457433)