SOFTWARE EFFORT MODELS FOR EARLY ESTIMATION OF PROCESS-CONTROL APPLICATIONS

Existing software effort models have severe limitations for early use in the software development lifecycle. We develop models to estimate lines of code and function counts directly from user application features of process control systems. Since the application features are known with reasonable degree of confidence during early stages of development, we are able to extend the use of the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) and function points based approach for early software cost estimation. We also develop alternative feature-based models that estimate size and effort using application features and productivity factors. At our research site, the feature-based models estimate software effort with the least error.