Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!bellcore!dduck!duncan
From: duncan@dduck.ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: 50,000 lines: a lot or a little?
Message-ID: <17111@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 30 Jun 89 00:57:05 GMT
References: <8587@june.cs.washington.edu> <17077@bellcore.bellcore.com> <684@bnr-fos.UUCP>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: duncan@ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan)
Lines: 46

In article <684@bnr-fos.UUCP> schow%BNR.CA.bitnet@relay.cs.net (Stanley Chow) writes:
>In article <17077@bellcore.bellcore.com> duncan@ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan) writes:
> [Commenting on the number of programmers and man-year is very high 
>  for a >1Million line project.]
>>
>>The latter is a problem for me since an industry average of lines per person
>>per year is anywhere from 500 to 7000 based on the kind of application. (This
>>does NOT count "reused" code and generated code volumes which would drive the
>>numbers higher for traditional business data processing applications.)  If we
>>use 3000 LOC/yr as an average, then the number of programmers and years seem
>>to me to be incredibly large.
>>
>>Perhaps some aspect of the life-time support and maintenance is being taken
>>into account here?  Like I said, I do not recall the context of the numbers.
>>I do believe context is vital whenever such numbers are being discussed!
>>
>
>I would think that after several years, modules starts to get rewritten,
>lots of changes are made. This kind of maintainence activity contributs
>to the "productivity" KLOC count but not to the "Project size" count.

Well, projects do not tend to get smaller over time in terms of the total KLOC,
so project size would increase.  And most maintenance produces lower KLOC
counts for productivity numbers since there is significant comprehension time,
debbugging time, and regression testing added to the normal design/code/test
effort.  Thus, productivity usually drops over time while size increases.

I do not believe the typically reported metrics tell a lot about the context,
which is why I made my last statement.  For example, while most organizations
seem to count more than just "coders" in their staff numbers when they compute
productivity, not all seem to include management.  Some include administrative
support people and central data center staff bnecause they are "in the budget"
while others do not.  For defect counts, some start when the software reaches
the first use outside the development organization, others start after a sig-
nificant beta test period.

>Stanley Chow        BitNet:  schow@BNR.CA
>BNR		    UUCP:    ..!psuvax1!BNR.CA.bitnet!schow
>(613) 763-2831		     ..!utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!schow%bnr-public
>Me? Represent other people? Don't make them laugh so hard.


Speaking only for myself, of course, I am...
Scott P. Duncan (duncan@ctt.bellcore.com OR ...!bellcore!ctt!duncan)
                (Bellcore, 444 Hoes Lane  RRC 1H-210, Piscataway, NJ  08854)
                (201-699-3910 (w)   609-737-2945 (h))