Accounting for Product Similarity in Software Project Duration Estimation Semra Yilmaz Tastekin Aselsan Inc., Mehmet Akif Ersoy Mahallesi 296 Cadde No. 16, Yenimahalle, Ankara, Turkey syilmaz@aselsan.com.tr Yusuf Murat Erten Izmir Institute of Technology Izmir, Turkey muraterten@iyte.edu.tr Semih Bilgen Computer Engineering Department, Yeditepe University Istanbul, Turkey semih.bilgen@yeditepe.edu.tr Received 7 August 2013 Revised 8 February 2015 Accepted 21 February 2015 We extend an existing model proposed for estimating project duration for industrial projects in general, to software intensive systems projects. We show, through nine di®erent cases studies from di®erent sectors, that product similarity, measured in terms of requirements reuse, can be incorporated into that model to improve its applicability in software intensive systems projects. Keywords: Product development time; product similarity based on requirements reuse. 1. Introduction Estimation of product development time is a critical activity at the outset of any software intensive system development project. Johnson and Kirchain [1] state that 70% to 90% of project costs are determined during these earlier stages. However, at this stage, little information on development details is available. Thus, it is not easy to determine the project development time correctly and inaccurate estimations can present risks in terms of project scheduling and resource allocation. Bashir and International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Vol. 26, No. 1 (2016) 63–86 # . c World Scienti¯c Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S0218194016500042 63 Int. J. Soft. Eng. Knowl. Eng. 2016.26:63-86. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY OF IZMIR on 08/10/17. For personal use only.