Part A. Cost Estimate with COCOMO II
A popular saying is “Cost, Schedule, and Quality: Pick Any Two.” However, there are ways to achieve all three, as demonstrated in this homework.
Beaver, Inc. needs to develop a large new supply chain management system within 24 months and an available budget of $8,200,000. The full set of capabilities adds up to 200 KSLOC of software. Beaver, Inc. is a CMMI Level 3 company, is generally familiar with the product line, will follow general conformity in design flexibility, generally does architecture and risk resolution, and has a largely cooperative team (i.e., all of its scale factors are rated High). Its average labor cost is $10,000, per person-month. For simplicity, consider all of its baseline cost driver ratings to be Nominal.
Compute the project’s cost and schedule for the following cases:
1. Everything as described above, and RELY rated as Nominal
2. RELY rated as High
3. RELY rated as High, SCED rated as Low
How many of “Cost, Schedule, Quality” criteria do the cases satisfy?
Suppose the project prioritized its capabilities and decided to develop the top-priority requirements. What would the 200 KSLOC need to be reduced to in order to satisfy all three “Cost, Schedule, Quality” criteria?
Work all cases by hand and show your work. Use the COCOMO II model to check your answers. http://csse.usc.edu/tools/COCOMOII.php
Note: There will be a small difference between your calculation by hand and the result provided by the COCOMO II model.
Part B. Sanity check
Chose an alternative estimation method (analogy, bottom up, or expert opinion, etc.) and discuss:
- 1. The process of how you would develop a cost estimate for the supply chain management system using this alternative method
- 2. How the cost estimate for the supply chain management system might differ by using this alternative method (Would it be higher or lower? Have more or less detail?)
- 3. Whether you expect this alternative method to yield a more accurate or less accurate estimate compared to the estimate obtained by using COCOMO II