Comments on: Evaluating alternative software production functions

作     者：Pickard, L Kitchenham, B Jones, P 

作者机构：Univ Keele Dept Comp Sci Keele ST5 5BG Staffs England Univ Keele Dept Math Keele ST5 5BG Staffs England Florida Atlantic Univ Dept Informat & Technol & Operat Management Boca Raton FL 33431 USA 

出 版 物：《IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING》 (IEEE Trans Software Eng)

年 卷 期：1999年第25卷第2期

页      面：282-283页

核心收录：

主　　题：software engineering economics software cost models production functions software process modeling software development 

摘      要：Software development projects are notorious for cost overruns and schedule delays. While dozens of software cost models have been proposed, few of them seem to have any degree of consistent accuracy. One major factor contributing to this persistent and wide spread problem is an inadequate understanding of the real behavior of software development processes. We believe that software development could be studied as an economic production process and that established economic theories and methods could be used to develop and validate software production and cost models. Here, we present the results of evaluating four alternative software production models using the P-test, a statistical procedure developed specifically for testing the truth of a hypothesis in the presence of alternatives in econometric studies. We found that the truth of the widely used Cobb-Douglas type of software production and cost models (e.g., COCOMO) cannot be maintained in the presence of quadratic or translog models. Overall, the quadratic software production function is shown to be the most plausible model for representing software production processes. Limitations of this study and future directions are also discussed.