Applying the Use Case Points effort estimation technique to Avionics Systems

One of the most important phases regarding Software Project Management is planning. On this phase, efforts and resources estimation must be taken into account considering human, materials, infrastructure, time, and budget. Generally, it depends on technical, environmental, human and political factors. It also can affect software final cost and development effort. The estimation tackled on this work was based on Use Case Points (UCP) effort estimation technique, introduced by Gustav Karner in 1993. This paper considered both the best and the worst scenarios for developing a software product. It helped to verify and reveal which are the activities that may cause project lateness. The major contribution of this work was to provide acceptable software estimation for avionics system development and case study integration for an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Project. The UCP effort estimation was applied to just one UAS named Preliminary Testing Monitoring Station (PTMS). That system was considered as a key part of the UAS Project. The strategy to get accurate estimate was the utilization of a well-defined software process, where documentation was continuously improved. This work has adopted Rational Unified Process (RUP), Unified Modeling Language (UML), and Object-Orientation (00). RUP has a specific artifact for use case models and the estimation was accomplished by taking information from this artifact. Another contribution of this work was the development of a software tool based upon the UCP technique. At the end, this paper reports significant estimate results to help project managers taking important decisions throughout the project development life-cycle.