Nowadays, Modern Software Development has moved far away from Conventional waterfall model, in which each and every stage or phase of the development process independent of completion of previous stage. All benefits of economic as basic part of transitioning from conventional waterfall model to an iterative development process are very significant but are also very difficult and hard to quantify. As benchmark of economic impact of improvement of process being expected, consider exponent parameters of process of COCOMO II model.
These exponent parameters generally range from 1.01 (no dis-economy of scale) to 1.26 (dis-economy of scale). All parameters that simply control and govern value of exponent of process are application precedentedness, flexibility of process, architecture risk resolution, team cohesion, and also maturity of software process.
The following are in list that maps exponent parameters of process of COCOMO II :
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Application Precedentedness –
In understanding how to plan and execute project of software development, the main critical experience is Domain experience. The key goal or target for unprecedented systems is to confront risks and to establish precedents early, even if they not complete either experimental. This is main essential reason due to which software industries have moved to an iterative life-cycle process. In life cycle, early iterations generally establish or develop precedents from which product, process, and plans can be explained and elaborated in evolving levels detail. -
Process Flexibility –
Modern software development is explained by large solution space and various interrelated concerns that there is paramount requirement for non-stop incorporation of changes. These alterations or changes might be inherent in understating issue or problem, solution space, or plans. By the efficient change management that commensurate’s with the project requirements must support artifacts of project. To achieve software return on investment, it is very important and necessary to have configurable process that allows common framework to accepted and adopted across range of various projects. -
Architecture Risk Resolution –
For successful iterative development process, development of crucial theme i.e. Architecture risk resolution is responsible. Architecture is generally developed or established and stabilized by project team before development of components that usually make up whole suite of applications components. The infrastructure, common, and control mechanisms are generally forced by architecture-first and component-based development approach so that it can be elaborated very early in life cycle and drives all components to make or buy decisions into process of architecture. -
Team Cohesion –
Generally, teams that are successful are cohesive and teams that are cohesive are successful. Objectives and priorities that are common are shared among these cohesive and successful teams. Nowadays, advancement in technology like programming languages, Unified Modeling Language (UML) has allowed more rigorous and understandable notations for communicating information of software engineering, especially in needs or requirements and design artifacts that were ad hoc are completely dependent on exchange of paper previously. These model-based formats have allowed support of round-trip engineering that is very much needed to develop change freedom sufficient for developing design representations. -
Software Process Maturity –
For Software Process Assessment, Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is Software Engineering Institute which is well-accepted benchmark. A highly mature process is allowed through an integrated environment that generally provides appropriate and correct level of automation to instrument process for control of objective quality.