Calibrating COCOMO(R) II for Projects with High Personnel Turnover

Software cost and effort estimation is a necessary step in the software development lifecycle to track progress, manage resources, and negotiate. Though many accepted cost models exist, local calibration results in more accurate estimates. Locally calibrating Unified Code Count (UCC)’s dataset based on COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model)® II helped UCC’s development team learn which factors affected the effort, the amount of fixed costs associated with training new personnel and required deliverables, and resulted in a well-fitting effort estimation model. These insights give the development team a better understanding of the environment and where improvements are most necessary and possible.