A systematic review of software development cost estimation studies

This paper aims to provide a basis for the improvement of software estimation research through a systematic review of previous work. The review identifies 304 software cost estimation papers in 76 journals and classifies the papers according to research topic, estimation approach, research approach, study context and data set. A web-based library of these cost estimation papers is provided to ease the identification of relevant estimation research results. The review results combined with other knowledge provide support for recommendations for future software cost estimation research, including: 1) Increase the breadth of the search for relevant studies, 2) Search manually for relevant papers within a carefully selected set of journals when completeness is essential, 3) Conduct more studies on estimation methods commonly used by the software industry, and, 4) Increase the awareness of how properties of the data sets impact the results when evaluating estimation methods

A Multi-Agent Architecture for Distributed Domain-Specific Information Integration

On both the public Internet and private Intranets, there is a vast amount of data available that is owned and maintained by different organizations, distributed all around the world. These data resources are rich and recent; however, information gathering and knowledge discovery from them, in a particular knowledge domain, confronts major difficulties. The objective of this article is to introduce an autonomous methodology to provide for domain-specific information gathering and integration from multiple distributed sources

Notes on the Next Generation Software Factory

Almost twenty years have passed since the first software factory started operations. From his firsthand experiences, the author introduces a typical software factory model currently being used in Japan's software factories. A project called Japanese Software Factory of the Next Generation (JSF/NEXT), which is headed up by the author, has started to work out a new software factory model. The project aims to create an extension of current software factory models in order to meet recent needs for information system-integration and software productivity/quality improvement

Analysis and improvement of a multi-pass compiler for a pipeline architecture

In this thesis a parallel environment for the execution of a multi-pass Pascal compiler is considered. Some possible and appropriate ways to speed up each pass of the parallelized compiler are investigated. In addition, a new approach, using the concepts of software science, is explored for obtaining gross performance characteristics of a multi-pass compiler;A pipeline architecture is used for the parallel compilation. The performance characteristics of the pipelined compiler are determined by a trace-driven simulation of the pipelined compiler. The actions in the multi-processor system are synchronized by an event-driven simulation of the pipeline system. The pipelined compiler and possible improvements are analyzed in terms of the location of the bottleneck, queue size, overhead factor, and partition policy. The lexical analysis phase is found to be the initial bottleneck. The improvement of this phase and its effects on the other phases are presented. Also, possible methods for improving the non-lexical analysis phases are investigated based on a study of the data structures and operations of these phases;For obtaining gross performance characteristics of a multi-pass compiler, an analysis based only on the intermediate code files is performed. One of the key concepts in Halstead\u27s software science, called the language level, is applied to this analysis. From the experimental results and statistical verification it is found that there exists a strong correlation between the stand-alone execution time and language level

A software classification scheme

Reusing code is one approach to software reusability. Code is the end product of the software lifecycle. It is delivered in a low level representation that is difficult to reuse unless an almost perfect match exists between available features and required specifications. There is a need to organize large inventories of software such that reusable code is easy to locate and exchange. The relative success in the reuse of code fragments reported by some software factories is due in part to their capacity to encapsulate domain specific functions and create specialized libraries of components classified by these locally standardized functions.A general software classification scheme that organizes reusability related attributes and common functions from different domains is proposed as a partial solution to the software reusability problem. For the problem of selecting from similar, potentially reusable. components, a partial solution based on evaluation of common characteristics is also proposed. A library system is presented that integrates the proposed classification scheme with an evaluation mechanism based on inherent component attributes, programming languages characteristics and reuser experience.The fundamental contribution of this dissertation is a formal treatment of a faceted scheme for software classification leading to better understanding of reusability at the code level. This approach has been prototyped in a library system for the semi-automatic classification of software components. Analysis were performed to evaluate the classification scheme. The results show the potential of the scheme in organizing collections of code fragments, in improving retrieval, and in simplifying the classification process. Tests of the evaluation mechanism showed positive correlation with evaluations conducted by potential reusers