Software Cost Estimating Methodology.

Abstract

The cost analysts of today are not only faced with predicting or estimating the research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT and E), operation and/or support costs of weapon systems hardware, but are also expected to derive a similar cost estimate for software. This report reviews several software cost estimating 'models' which exist today, and gives examples of their application to actual software programs. The models or cost estimating relationships (CERs) presented generally provide software cost estimates for the RDT and E phases of the life cycle, but have yet to be validated. The purpose of this report is to present some of the more popular software cost models and to encourage validation studies to determine which methods or models provide greatest promise for accuracy. It is hoped that this report will stimulate research and analysis into software cost estimating similar to the work being done in hardware cost prediction techniques. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1977
Accession Number
ADA048192

Entities

People

  • Thomas G. James Jr.

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Application Software
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Cost Models
  • Data Processing
  • Databases
  • Information Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Operating Systems
  • Processing Equipment
  • System Software
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Weapon Delivery

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis