Software cost estimation for component-based fourth-generation-language software applications

Abstract

Software cost estimation is important for budgeting, risk analysis, project planning and software improvement analysis. There are numerous estimation techniques. During the past three decades there had been some significant developments in effort estimation, size of software and cost estimation methodology. Current software cost estimation models have been experiencing increasing difficulties in estimating the costs of software, as new software development methodologies and technologies are emerging very rapidly. Most of the software cost models generally rely on such inputs as estimates of lines of source code, delivered sets of instructions, function points and processing complexity or experience levels to produce cost estimates. These models generally produce inaccurate results when used to estimate the cost of software development in current development environments such as those that use component-based software development environments like visual languages. The authors present in this study a new technique for software cost estimation that can be used for software projects developed using component-based fourth-generation-language environment. The model was calibrated using the empirical data collected from 19 software systems. Efficiency of the model was also compared with an existing model used for such environment. The proposed model achieved better predictive accuracy.