Estimating size in incremental software development projects.

Abstract

This work develops a quantitative analytical framework for the estimation of the size of projects in incremental and agile development environments. By extending the COCOMO approach, the paper explores the relationship between the effort possible within such constrains and the number of planned increments thereby offering an added scope for tradeoffs in effort-boxed projects. The work shows the impact of adjusting increments in dynamic and complex environments when time and resources are fixed. It therefore provides a new reasoning method to enable developers and managers to reach intelligent decisions and reduce the likelihood of failure