A Predicitive Model for Programming Time: A Factor Analytic Approach

Abstract

The relationship between software complexity metrics and programming effort is explored. As a measure of programming effort, the development time of a program was systematically associated with software complexity metrics in two distinct modeling scenarios. Predictive models were developed with a set of raw complexity metrics and a set of metrics on a reduced complexity space. The metrics were mapped onto the reduced space through the use of factor analysis. This technique was used to reveal the underlying conceptual domains of the complexity space which was then associated with programming time through regression analysis.A significant relationship between programming effort and program complexity was found. In a direct comparison of two alternate modeling techniques, the reduced factor model was found to have better predictive quality than an association with raw complexity metrics.