MEsA Future Trends Panel Discussion Jairus Hihn 22nd International Forum on COCOMO and Systems/Software Cost Modeling (2007)

Software Systems Trends We will see more and more systems that organically evolve integrating over networks with Systems of Systems characteristics –Plug and play systems that were never originally designed to work together Ever greater use of –Line between systems and software will blur –‘programming approaches’ that do not need programmers graphics based Auto code generation –Data mining and machine learning –Automation –Planning algorithms –More sophisticated fault protection –Agile like development processes All of these severely challenge traditional costing approaches

Costing Trends Do we want to make ourselves better or improve the quality of costing across the industry –Dominant technique is bottom up estimates from engineers –Engineers use analogy and WAG Deal better with COTS and SOS More dynamic models –Calibration as part of estimation More integrated tools –Cost, defects, risk –Parametric and analogy –Design and estimation Analogy based estimation –Nearest Neighbour –Also needs language support because people sue words differently –Integration of expert judgment and data Whatever we do we need to keep things as simple as possible