Software Development Cost Estimation Using COCOMO II Based Meta Model

Sammanfattning: Large amounts of software are running on what is considered to be legacy platforms. These systems are often business critical and cannot be phased out without a proper replacement. The generations of developers that have developed, maintained and supported these systems are leaving the workforce leaving an estimated shortfall of developers in the near time. Migration of these legacy applications can be troublesome due poor documentation and estimating the sizes of the projects is nontrivial. Expert estimates are the most common method of estimation when it comes to software projects but the method is heavily relying on the experience, knowledge and intuition of the estimator. The use of a complementary estimation method can increase the accuracy of the estimation. This thesis constructs a meta model that combines enterprise architecture concepts with the COCOMO II estimation model in order to utilize the benefits of architectural overviews and tested models with the purpose of supporting the migration process. The study proposes a method combining expert cost estimation with model based estimation which increases the estimation accuracy. The combination method on the four project samples resulted in a mean magnitude of relative error of 10%.