University of Sindh Journal of Information and Communication Technology (USJICT) Volume 4, Issue 4, December 2020 ISSN-E: 2523-1235, ISSN-P: 2521-5582 © Published by University of Sindh, Jamshoro Website: http://sujo.usindh.edu.pk/index.php/USJICT/ Why we need COCOMO III? Sana Iqbal 1 , Dr. Muhammad Shahab Siddiqui 2 , Zazilah May 3 1, 2 Centre for Computing Research, Department of Computer Scienceand Software Engineering, Jinnah University for Women, Karachi, Pakistan. 3 Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS,Malaysia sanaiq2@gmail.com 1 ; shahab.siddiqui@ieee.org 2 ; zazilah@utp.edu.my 3 Abstract: In software development phase, projects are often delayed and cross the budget. This problem occurs due to the inaccurate estimation of the project cost and effort for the project development. These estimations are dependent on the project size that may use metrics, LOC and function point analysis. Variety of techniques exist for project cost estimation, which includes algorithm-based models and expert opinion. Expert opinion is one of the ways to estimate project effort. But it doesn’t support project re-estimation during its lifecycle, which helps in tracking project. Cost estimation using algorithmic model plays important role in delivering quality product. COCOMO is being used for cost estimation; but it needs to be updated based on new process models therefore another version of COCOMO should be developed. This paper draws attention towards what should be in proposed COCOMO III, to avoid project uncertainties, risks and deliver a quality product within budget and timeliness. Keywords: COCOMO, Cost Estimation, Effort Estimation, Software Cost Drivers I. INTRODUCTION Cost Estimation problem often occurs in software projects development, which results in a worst project management. Software cost and effort estimation plays an important role in SDLC (Software development life cycle). It has been used in planning, monitoring and budgeting the development activities. It helps in timely and within budget delivery of a project. To solve cost and effort estimation problems variety of models were introduced. The one that is commonly used is COCOMO (Cost Constructive Model) [1,2] developed by Barry W. Boehm in 1981. Therefore, this version was referred as COCOMO I or COCOMO 81[3, 4] and later one as COCOMO II, which was introduced in 1997. COCOMO I play an important role in estimating cost and effort at an early phase while COCOMO II gives an effective calibration process. But in case of COCOMO I estimation at an early phase may leads to an estimation failure whereas COCOMO II [5, 6, 7] requires calibration to a specific context which can be difficult to adapt where there is incomplete or limited data. Therefore, there is a need to develop another improved version of COCOMO as it’s been 22 years since the COCOMO II is updated and calibrated new data to software engineering. COCOMO II uses scaling factors, line of code and cost drivers to estimate the project cost but it is still lacking the accuracy. To overcome this now it’s the time that COCOMO III should be developed. This paper is organized as Section II covers literature review and related work. Section III briefly describes SWOT analysis for COCOMO III. In Section IV the need of COCOMO III is discussed. COCOMO III parameters are introduced in Section V. The paper is concluded in Section VI. Section VII is highlighting future directions. II. LITERATURE REVIEW AND RELATED WORK COCOMO is a model for estimation of cost, effort and schedule of software projects developed by Barry Boehm. It uses regression basic formula having parameters (cost drivers) derived from historical data and characteristics of current projects. This model was first developed in 1981 and it’s another version named as COCOMO II was developed in 1997 along with cost drivers. These drivers are helpful in understanding various factors that can affect the cost of the project. But now these cost drivers [8, 9, 10] are not applicable as they were in the past there is a need to develop the improved version of the model according to the latest trends. COCOMO I help in understanding the cost consequences of decisions in development and support of software project. Whereas COCOMO II offers great amount parameters along with the software cost estimation [11, 12]. COCOMO I is a chain of three sub model each of them is more detailed than other. The first sub model is known as Basic COCOMO which is responsible for measuring the lines of code (LOC) for calculating the development cost and effort of a software project. Basic COCOMO is further divided into three types of project modes that are Organic, semi-detached and embedded projects [13, 14]. Organic projects are simple and developed by good experienced small team, semi-