JMU CS345 - Software Engineering
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Homework: Time/Cost Estimation


1 Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to help you acquire (and demonstrate that you have acquired) the knowledge and skills required to estimate the time/cost involved in developing software products.

2 Overview

As you know, you've developed a product called Transcriptz for the (fictitious) company Sagacious Media. Normally, you would have estimated the size of the product and the time/cost required to develop it before you accepted the project (and certainly before you told them what you would charge to complete it). Unfortunately, you didn't know how to do so at the start of the semester so you had to work for free.

Now that you know how, you're going to calculate those estimates (even though it's more than a little late). This will be an unrealistic exercise since you've already completed the project, but it will be instructive nonetheless (and, of course, easier)

3 Tasks

Specifically, you must complete the following tasks.
  1. Calculate the number of function points (F) in Transcriptz. Provide considerable detail about how you counted the EIs, EOs, EQs, ILFs, and EIFs and some detail about how you determined the complexity of each. You should consider every class that you wrote and every class that was provided to you.
  2. Discuss whether or not the actual number of lines of code (L) in Transcriptz is consistent with what one would expect based on your estimate of function points and the typical range of L/F for Java projects.
  3. Calculate the effort (E) in person-months using both the Albrecht and Gafney (1983) and Kemerer (1987) models. Call the first EAG and the second EK .
  4. Discuss whether or not EAG and EK are sensible. Explain your answers.
  5. You should know how much effort your "organization" (i.e., you and I) actually devoted to the project (assuming that I devoted 40 person-hours to the design). Call this value (measured in person-months) EM (for the measured effort).
  6. Use EM and F to calculate an organization-specific "rule of thumb" (measured in function points per person month) that your organization could use in the future.
  7. Estimate the cost (C) of developing Transcriptz from EM and a cost per person month of $20,000.

4 Submission

You must submit (using Gradescope) a .pdf file that describes all of the calculations you performed and answers all of the questions.

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