Estimating requirements for a large software engineering project
Rolland H. Berry, Robert M. Schoenborn · 1992
This paper discusses our experiences in estimating the cost and staffing requirements for the Standard Installation/DivisionPersonnel System (SIDPERS-3) software development project.SIDPERS-3 is the US Army military personnel system, a management information system (MIS).The system will be fielded at multiple locations on personal computers, including ruggedizcd PC's with limited capacity.It will use the XDB relational database.SIDPERS-3 will interface with several other Army systemsand databasesand will be required to be consistent with Army data element standards.The systemis being developed on the Rational computer.It is estimated that it will contain in excessof 800,000lines of Ada code. STATISTICA, Incorporated is the prime contractor on the project. Planning Analysis Corporation is one of the subcontractors along with Systems Research and Applications Corporation and Martin Marietta.We estimated the cost and staffing requirements for SIDPERS-3 by developing a Project Estimation process.Our process consisted of a model to estimate the number of lines of code the project would require, a model to estimate the cost of the staff effort required, a way to include those costs that the model did not account for, and a way to validate the estimation process.Organization of the paper.