Software Project Duration Estimation Based on COSMIC Method Applied to Data Flow Diagram

Abstract

Business process models are created before the detailed software design, during requirements phase of software development. Even disciplined agile methodology includes business process modeling, before development iterations start. Their use in an estimation of software development duration could be beneficial, because they provide sufficient elements for mapping with software design and development planning. In this paper we propose the method for software project duration estimation based on Common Software Measurement International Consortium (COSMIC) method, applied to data flow diagram. This method is based on data flow diagram analysis and extraction of primitive business procceses,data flows and data stores. The paper contributes with the approach to enhance COSMIC method with calculation of software development process duration based on both data movement-related and data-manipulation-related software functional sub-processes. Data movement-related functional sub-processes are derived from Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) operations assigned to data flows. Calculation of data manipulation-related functional sub-processes duration is derived from number of business processes. The proposed metric enables calculating effort (expressed in Cosmic Functional Points units) and duration (presented with Man/Hours units). An example of the approach application and an empirical study demonstrates the applicability of the approach.