COCOMO-based effort estimation for iterative and incremental software development

Abstract

Incremental software development and delivery have been used in software projects in many ways for many years. Justifications for incremental approaches include risk amelioration, the management of evolving requirements, and end-user involvement. Incremental development, including iterative, incremental delivery, has become a norm in many sectors. However, there has been little work on modelling the effort in such development and hence a dearth of comparative analyses of cost models for incremental development/delivery. We attempt to rectify this by proposing a COCOMO-style effort model for incremental development/delivery and explore the relationship between effort and the number of increments, thereby providing new insights into the economic impact of incremental approaches to software projects.