COCOMO MODEL

Software Engineering

Prepared
By
Devan Sharma
 COCOMO Model
COCOMO was first published in 1981 Barry W. Boehm's Book Software
engineering economics

Fig : 1 W.Boehm
 COCOMO Model
COCOMO model is used to estimate size ,cost and time of software to be
developed

Size
Cost

Time

Fig 2: Need of COCOMO

 COCOMO MODEL Types

Type of software

Semidetached
Organic Embedded
 COCOMO
Mode Project size Nature of Project

Organic Typically Small size project, experienced

2-50 KLOC
developers in the familiar
environment. For example, pay
roll, inventory projects ,Banking system

Semi Typically Medium size project, Medium

detached size team, Average previous
50-300 KLOC experience on similar project.
For example: Utility systems
like compilers, database
systems

Embedded Typically over Large project, Real time

300 KLOC
systems, Complex interfaces,
Very little previous experience.
For example: ATMs, Air Traffic
Control ,Navigation satellite
Table 1: The comparison of three COCOMO modes
Person-Month
• Person-month (PM) is considered to be an appropriate unit for
measuring effort
 COCOMO MODEL

The Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO)

Constructive Cost model
(COCOMO)

Basic Intermediate Complete(detailed)

Model proposed by
B. W. Boehm’s
through his book
Software Engineering Economics in 1981
 COCOMO MODEL

Basic Model
Basic COCOMO model takes the form
bb
E=ab(KLOC) PM
db
D=cb (E) Months

where E is effort applied in Person-Months, and D is the

development time in months. The coefficients ab, bb, cb and db are
given in table
Fig 3: COCOMO Model equation
Effort versus product size.

Fig 4 : Graph for effort

Development time versus size.

Fig 4 : Graph for Time

Disadvantages of Basic COCOMO Model
• It considers only KLOC to estimate effort
• It can not be used for modern tools
• It does not consider different parameters
Note : Intermediate COCOMO model considers different
parameters to estimate effort and time
 COCOMO MODEL
Intermediate Model
Cost drivers

(i) Product Attributes

Required s/w reliability (accuracy)
Size of application database
Complexity of the product
(ii) Hardware Attributes
Run time performance constraints
Memory constraints
Speed of system
 COCOMO MODEL
(iii) Personal Attributes
Analyst capability
Programmer capability
Application experience
Virtual m/c experience
Programming language experience
(iv) Project Attributes
Modern programming practices
Use of software tools
 COCOMO model
Disadvantage of basic and intermediate COCOMO model
• A major shortcoming of both the basic and the intermediate
COCOMO models is that they consider a software product as a
single homogeneous entity.
• Now these days large software systems are made up of several
smaller sub-systems or modules with different characteristics.
 Complete COCOMO model
• The complete COCOMO model considers different subsystems
of the software
• For example CU website has different modules or subsystem
 Graphical user interface (Front End)
 Database (your data is stored )
Complete COCOMO model
• Different modules or subsystems of the complete COCOMO model
Database part
 Graphical user interface (GUI) part
 Communication part
 Communication part can be considered as embedded software.
 The database part could be semi-detached software
 The GUI part organic software.

The costs for these three components can be estimated separately, and
summed up to give the overall cost of the system