Cost-benefit impact study on the adoption of the draft proposed revised X3.23 American National Standard programming language COBOL
Marco Fiorello, John V. Cugini · 1983
The purpose of the study is to assess the estimated costs and benefits for the Federal Government which would result from adoption of the proposed revision of American National Standard COBOL as a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) .Potential benefits of $90.2 million have been identified, stemming primarily from improved productivity in both the development and maintenance of COBOL programs.Estimated costs of $17.9 million have been identified, arising principally from the effort needed to convert old COBOL programs to the new specification, which is incompatible in some respects with the current specification.In support of the study, we conducted interviews with Federal ADP managers and officials, and also analyzed over one thousand Federal COBOL programs for various syntactic characteristics.The study concludes that the potential benefits of a new standard outweigh the estimated costs.