An Acquisition Process for the Management of Risks of Cost Overrun and Time Delay Associated with Software Development
Abstract
The ability to quantify risk is essential to the processes of budgeting and scheduling. During the process of hiring to complete specified tasks, customers must be able to verify contractor estimates and to make sound judgements on the risks of cost overruns and time delays. The following two questions are central to this paper: Do developers with little experience over- estimate or underestimate the complexity of the task because of their past experience, the assumption they make, the models they select, and how they define the model parameters? What are the sources of risk associated with project cost estimation? How can such risk be quantified? To address these questions, this paper proposes a systematic acquisition process that is aimed at assessing and managing the risks of cost overruns and time delays associated with software development. The proposed acquisition process, which is composed of four phases (listed below), is grounded on the following three basic premises: (a) any single-value estimate of cost or completion time is inadequate to capture and represent the variability and uncertainty associated with cost and schedule. Acquisition process, Risk, Cost overrun.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA276466
Entities
People
- Clyde Chittister
- Yacov Y. Haimes
Organizations
- Carnegie Mellon University