Problem 1
Under what circumstance might a company charge a much higher price for a software system than that suggested by the cost estimate plus a normal profit margin?
Problem 2
Describe two metrics that have been used to measure programmer productivity. Comment briefly on the advantages and disadvantages of each of these metrics.
Problem 3
In the development of large, embedded real-time systems, suggest five factors that are likely to have a significant effect on the productivity of the software development team.
Problem 4
Cost estimates are inherently risky irrespective of the estimation technique used. Suggest four ways in which the risk in a cost estimate can be reduced.
Problem 5
Why should several estimation techniques be used to produce a cost estimate for a large, complex software system?
Problem 6
A software manager is in charge of the development of a safety-critical software system that is designed to control a radiotherapy machine to treat patients suffering from cancer. This system is embedded in the machine and must run on a special-purpose processor with a fixed amount of memory (8 Mbytes). The machine communicates with a patient database system to obtain the details of the patient and, after treatment, automatically records the radiation dose delivered and other treatment details in the database. The COCOMO method is used to estimate the effort required to develop this system and an estimate of 26 person-months is computed. All cost driver multipliers were set to 1 when making this estimate. Explain why this estimate should be adjusted to take project, personnel, product and organisational factors into account. Suggest four factors that might have significant effects on the initial COCOMO estimate and propose possible values for these factors. Justify why you have included each factor.
Problem 7
Give three reasons why algorithmic cost estimates prepared in different organisations are not directly comparable
Problem 8
Explain how the algorithmic approach to cost estimation may be used by project managers for option analysis. Suggest a situation where managers may choose an approach that is not based on the lowest project cost.
Problem 9
Some very large software projects involve writing millions of lines of code. Suggest how useful the cost estimation models are likely to be for such systems. Why might the assumptions on which they are based be invalid for very large software systems?
Problem 10
Is it ethical for a company to quote a low price for a software contract knowing that the requirements are ambiguous and that they can charge a high price for subsequent changes requested by the customer?
