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Project Cost Overrun Simulation in Software Product Line Development

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4589))

Abstract

The cost of a Software Product Line (SPL) development project sometimes exceeds the initially planned cost, because of requirements volatility and poor quality. In this paper, we propose a cost overrun simulation model for time-boxed SPL development. The model is an enhancement of a previous model, specifically now including: consideration of requirements volatility, consideration of unplanned work for defect correction during product projects, and nominal project cost overrun estimation. The model has been validated through stochastic simulations with fictional SPL project data, by comparing generated unplanned work effort to actual change effort, and by sensitivity analysis. The result shows that the proposed model has reasonable validity to estimate nominal project cost overruns and its variability. Analysis indicates that poor management of requirements and quality will almost double estimation error, for the studied simulation settings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business Administration, Toyo University, Japan

    Makoto Nonaka

  2. National ICT, Australia

    Liming Zhu & Mark Staples

  3. Lero, University of Limerick, Ireland

    Muhammad Ali Babar

Authors
  1. Makoto Nonaka
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  2. Liming Zhu
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  3. Muhammad Ali Babar
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  4. Mark Staples
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Editor information

Jürgen Münch Pekka Abrahamsson

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© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Nonaka, M., Zhu, L., Babar, M.A., Staples, M. (2007). Project Cost Overrun Simulation in Software Product Line Development. In: Münch, J., Abrahamsson, P. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4589. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73460-4_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73460-4_29

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73459-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73460-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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