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Phase distribution of software development effort

Published: 09 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Effort distribution by phase or activity is an important but often overlooked aspect compared to other steps in the cost estimation process. Poor effort allocation is among the major root causes of rework due to insufficiently resourced early activities. This paper provides results of an empirical study on phase effort distribution data of 75 industry projects, from the China Software Benchmarking Standard Group (CSBSG) database. The phase effort distribution patterns and variation sources are presented, and analysis results show some consistency in effects of software size and team size on code and test phase distribution variations, and some considerable deviations in requirements, design, and transition phases, compared with recommendations in the COCOMO model. Finally, this paper discusses the major findings and threats to validity and presents general guidelines in directing effort allocation. Empirical findings from this study are beneficial for stimulating discussions and debates to improve cost estimation and benchmarking practices.

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  • (2024)An Assessment of Rules of Thumb for Software Phase Management, and the Relationship Between Phase Effort and Schedule SuccessIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2023.333938350:2(209-219)Online publication date: Feb-2024
  • (2023)Software Cost and Effort Estimation: Current Approaches and Future TrendsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.331271611(99268-99288)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2022)The Influence of Cost Drivers on Effort Estimation in Distributed Software DevelopmentProceedings of the 26th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3530019.3531331(399-407)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
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cover image ACM Conferences
ESEM '08: Proceedings of the Second ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement
October 2008
374 pages
ISBN:9781595939715
DOI:10.1145/1414004
  • General Chair:
  • Dieter Rombach,
  • Program Chairs:
  • Sebastian Elbaum,
  • Jürgen Münch
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 09 October 2008

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Author Tags

  1. cost estimation
  2. development type
  3. effort allocation
  4. effort distribution
  5. estimation accuracy
  6. phase distribution

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)An Assessment of Rules of Thumb for Software Phase Management, and the Relationship Between Phase Effort and Schedule SuccessIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2023.333938350:2(209-219)Online publication date: Feb-2024
  • (2023)Software Cost and Effort Estimation: Current Approaches and Future TrendsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.331271611(99268-99288)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2022)The Influence of Cost Drivers on Effort Estimation in Distributed Software DevelopmentProceedings of the 26th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3530019.3531331(399-407)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
  • (2022)Generalizing Software Defect Estimation Using Size and Two Interaction VariablesHandbook on Artificial Intelligence-Empowered Applied Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-031-08202-3_4(55-74)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2022
  • (2021)Effort prediction for the software project construction phaseJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.236533:7Online publication date: 1-Jul-2021
  • (2019)Live software developmentCompanion Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming10.1145/3328433.3328456(1-6)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2019
  • (2018)Model-Based Software EngineeringProceedings of the 21th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems10.1145/3239372.3239404(213-223)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2018
  • (2018)Informed projectionProceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Software and System Process10.1145/3202710.3203147(76-85)Online publication date: 26-May-2018
  • (2018)Re-estimating software effort using prior phase efforts and data mining techniquesInnovations in Systems and Software Engineering10.1007/s11334-018-0311-z14:3(209-228)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2018
  • (2017)The Effort Distribution of Software Development PhasesComputer Science and Application10.12677/CSA.2017.7505207:05(428-437)Online publication date: 2017
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