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Costar

Costar is a software cost estimation tool based on the COCOMO model. It allows project managers to estimate a project's duration, staffing levels, effort, and costs. Costar supports multiple COCOMO models and allows users to experiment with different parameters and tradeoffs. Users input information like source lines of code, scale factors, and cost drivers to generate estimates. Costar then produces reports on the estimated effort, schedule, costs and staffing requirements.

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srinivas15j1988
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1K views

Costar

Costar is a software cost estimation tool based on the COCOMO model. It allows project managers to estimate a project's duration, staffing levels, effort, and costs. Costar supports multiple COCOMO models and allows users to experiment with different parameters and tradeoffs. Users input information like source lines of code, scale factors, and cost drivers to generate estimates. Costar then produces reports on the estimated effort, schedule, costs and staffing requirements.

Uploaded by

srinivas15j1988
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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COSTAR - COCOMO II Software Cost Estimation Tool

Aim:

To study about Costar, a COCOMO II software cost estimation tool.

Introduction to Costar

COCOMO is the world's most widely used software estimation model.

Costar is a software estimation tool based on the Constructive Cost


Model (COCOMO) described by Barry Boehm in his books Software Engineering
Economics and Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II.

Software project managers use Costar to produce estimates of a


project's duration, staffing levels, effort, and cost. Costar lets you make trade-
offs and experiment with "what-if" analyses to arrive at the optimal project
plan.

COCOMO has continued to evolve and improve since its introduction.


Costar supports the traditional COCOMO, and the most recent models:

Traditional COCOMO 81
Incremental COCOMO
REVIC
User defined COCOMO
COCOMO II

Working with costar:


The first time you run Costar, the Create Estimate Wizard runs to help you get
started. Click NEXT to create your first estimate.
The third page of the Create Estimate Wizard lets enter the size of your new
estimate. In this example, we've entered a size of 3,000 SLOC. Of course, you
can change this value later, as your learn more about your project, and as you
make trade-offs. Click NEXT to proceed.
The fourth page of the Create Estimate Wizard is used to select the COCOMO
estimating model. Costar has many COCOMO variants built in. Click NEXT to
accept the default COCOMO model.

The fifth page of the Create Estimate Wizard introduces you to the COCOMO
Scale Drivers. Click NEXT to proceed. The Create Estimate Wizard displays a
page for each of the 5 Scale Drivers, and lets you select a setting to describe
your project. You can press HELP to get more information about the Scale
Drivers. Click NEXT 5 times, to move forward through each of the Scale Drivers,
leaving them all set to their default values.
Cost Drivers:
The first page of the Cost Driver Wizard gives you a couple of hints about how
they're used and to set them. Note that the Create Estimate Wizard is still
running -- but it's waiting for you to finish the Cost Driver Wizard before it
resumes. Click NEXT to proceed.

The last page of the Create Estimate Wizard lets you select a couple of the
most common Costar reports on your new estimate. Click on DETAIL REPORT,
and then FINISH. When the Create Estimate Wizard completes, Costar's main
window appears. The main window displays all of the data related to the
current estimate and current component.
Detailed Report:

The Create Estimate Wizard also ran the Detail Report when it finished. The
Detail Report shows results similar to those summarized on the main Costar
window, but has a line of each COCOMO phase.

Estimate Toolbar

New Estimate -- Create a new estimate

Open Estimate -- Open an existing estimate

Save Estimate -- Save the current estimate to a file

Detail Report -- Display the Detail Report for the current estimate

Graph Milestones -- Display the Graph of Milestones

Graph Staffing -- Display the Graph of Staffing vs. Time

Toggle Automatic Estimation -- Automatic COCOMO calculation on/off

Display List of Estimates


Labour distribution worksheet:
This worksheet is used along with the Rates tab on the main Costar Window to
set the cost per Person-Month of each of the COCOMO phases.

The Model Tab:


The Select COCOMO Model button has been clicked to display the list of
COCOMO models.
The Model window is used to select a traditional COCOMO or COCOMO
II estimating model. The Early Design model is a COCOMO II model suitable for
use during the early stages of a project, when relatively little is known about
the project. COCOMO_85 is essentially the traditional COCOMO 81 model
described in Software Engineering Economics, and COCOMO_87 is a minor
enhancement to the traditional model, with a couple of new cost drivers
added. Ada_87 and APM_88 are based on the Ada Process Model developed
by Dr.Boehm as part of Ada COCOMO. Ada COCOMO has evolved into
COCOMO II.
The REVL Tab:
Size is the most fundamental input to the COCOMO II estimating
equation -- the better you're able to estimate the size of your project the more
accurate your software estimates will be. You can enter size in SLOC on the
Drivers & Size tab, or use one of the other methods (i.e. Reuse, Function
Points, or subcomponents) to size each component.
The Reuse Tab:
To model the reuse of an existing software component, fill in the size of
the existing module in the Lines Being Adapted field, and then fill in you
estimates for the percentage of the design, coding, and integration that will
have to be performed. If you're adding brand new code, fill in the Newly
Created Lines field. Three worksheets implement the new COCOMO II software
sizing for reuse -- press the appropriate button to change the Assessment &
Assimilation, Software Understanding, or Programmer Unfamiliarity factors.
The Function Points Tab:
To size your component in terms of Function Points, simply fill in your
counts on this tab, and Costar will calculate the equivalent number of Lines of
Code. You can change the assumption about the conversion factor by clicking
on the Change Lines per Function Point button.
The Increments Tab:
You can adjust which phases are included in each increment, and how
one increment is synchronized with the preceding increment with this screen.
You can describe incremental, spiral model, and rapid prototyping approaches
by judicious choices for the Increment Phasing Tab parameters. The Increment
Phasing tab is a schematic representation.
The Breakage Tab:
You can use it to describe how much code in previous increments will be
changed due to changes in requirements.

The Rates Tab:


This image depicts the main Costar Window with the Rates notebook tab
selected. You can define up to 12 Labor Classes for an estimate. Each labor
class has a name and an associated cost per Person-Month. These figures are
used with the Labor Distribution Worksheet to calculate the cost of each
phase.

The Costs Tab:


You can set the cost per Person-Month for each of the COCOMO phases in
either of two ways:
1) Simply fill in a cost in the appropriate field.
2) Use the Labor Distribution Worksheet and the Rates tab to calculate the
figure based on the labor classes assigned to each phase.

Conclusion:
Thus we see that Costar is a highly useful CASE tool in cost estimation
using COCOMO model.

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