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 forScore for the (fictitious) company perspecTV. 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 forScore. 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.
2. Discuss whether or not the actual number of lines of code (L) in forScore 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 E_AG and the second E_K .
4. Discuss whether or not E_AG and the second E_K are sensible. Explain your answers.
5. You should know how much effort your "organization" (you and I) actually devoted to the project (assuming that I devoted 40 person-hours to the design). Call this value E_M (for the measured effort).
6. Use E_M 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 forScore from E_M and a cost per person month of $20,000.

4 Submission

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