A change effort estimation model using impact analysis for the software development phase

Abstract

Change effort estimation and change impact analysis are two important methods for realizing the consequences of requested changes and make effective change acceptance decisions. Accepting too many changes in the software development phase causes additional cost and delay in the completion. On the other hand, rejection of the changes may cause customer dissatisfaction. There are very few works have been done to support effective change decisions in the software development phase compared to the software maintenance phase. The challenge of estimating the change effort in the software development phase is the existence of partially developed artifacts. In this report, we reviewed two selected current techniques; change impact analysis for the software development phase; and the well-known effort estimation model (COCOMO II). Afterwards, we introduced our new change effort estimation model for the software development phase which we name as COCHCOMO (Constructive Change Cost Model). It is developed to estimate change effort using impact analysis and initial COCOMO II estimated effort. Additionally, a prototype tool is developed to support our new model. The implementation of our model has been used to evaluate the accuracy of the model. The initial evaluation results on four case studies showed that this model is accurate.