Methods for Software Complexity and Development Effort Estimation and its Importance in the Area of ICT Governance

Abstract

The area of applications development for government purposes can be characterized to be task specific. In this context, development projects are usually more complex and there are some differences in comparison with commercial projects. The mission of the proposed chapter is an explanation of methods of project complexity evaluation based on analogy, crisp and fuzzy expert estimation and measure models. The selected methods for aggregation of expert’s estimations are also presented. Further the chapter introduces selected methods designed for complexity estimation. All the introduced methods are widely known except one that was designed by the lead author of the chapter. The method is called BORM Points and is developed for an IS project designed in BORM method (Business Object Relation Modeling). Each method is introduced first, then its step-by-step computation procedure is described and finally suggestion of software, which is supported method computation procedure. The results of the methods are in non-dimensional numbers and it is necessary to set up the relationship between complexity and effort, and introduces COCOMO model and its variants. Efforts are given about the implementation of this form of estimation approach in the area of ICT governance, especially at the grass roots e-governance.