Developing Project Duration Models in Software Engineering

Based on the empirical analysis of data contained inthe International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG)repository, this paper presents software engineering project durationmodels based on project effort.Duration models are built for the entire dataset and for subsets ofprojects developed for personal computer, mid-range and mainframeplatforms. Duration models are also constructed for projects requiringfewer than 400 person-hours of effort and for projects requiring morethan 400 person-hours of effort. The usefulness of adding the maximumnumber of assigned resources as a second independent variable toexplain duration is also analyzed. The opportunity to build durationmodels directly from project functional size in function points isinvestigated as well.