Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!cs.tcd.ie!csvax1!omahony
From: omahony@cs.tcd.ie (Donal O'Mahony - OMAHONY@cs.tcd.ie)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Question for COCOMO users
Message-ID: <31804@cs.tcd.ie>
Date: 17 Jan 89 22:01:48 GMT
References: <30797@cs.tcd.ie> <3734@metavax.UUCP>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Trinity College Dublin
Lines: 31

>>: So far, so good - the difficulty come in the scheduling equation
>>
>>which of the following is TRUE?
>>
>>A)   TDEV = 2.5(EFFORTnominal)**0.38
>>or
>>B)   TDEV = 2.5(EFFORTactual)**0.38
>>
>  I believe tha answer is A.  This is from looking back on notes from the
>  same book (similar course I hope :-) ).  The organic model in a few pages
>  back (pg 85 fig 6-5) shows the formula for MM as EFFORTnominal.

Actually, the reason I was wondering, is that I have problems with both.

If A is true, then it implies that the effort multipliers have no effect
on the time taken to develop a system.  In other words, even if you have
the best possible programmers, use all modern programming practices, and
all possible 'best approaches', it still takes the same time.

If, on the other hand (B) is true, then it makes a nonsense of the
method used to accelerate a project. For example, if you want to achieve
75% schedule compression, you want TDEVnew = 0.75 TDEVnominal, but you
actually get TDEVnew = 0.75 (B) which may turn out to be schedule
expansion instead!

I don't suppose Barry Boehm is listening, to give the final word on this??

_______________________________________________________________________
Donal O'Mahony        omahony@cs.tcd.ie
Computer Science Dept., Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
_______________________________________________________________________