jcardow@afit.af.mil (James E. Cardow) (03/23/91)
I need some help from the folks on the net (especially those familiar with government contracting) in looking at a problem. We want to come up with an analogy based method of predicting resource needs for a project. The situation is something like: If I have an existing, embedded subsystem that performs a set of clearly understood functions and I'm going to contract for a similar system (same functions, new technology etc.) Can I base the estimate on the cost of the existing system with some delta for the innovation? We are assessing many of the innovations and their impacts. We would welcome comments on the approach, but we need your thoughts a specific part of the problem. The specific problem is: can I define a delta for changes in the mil-std requirements? What we want to do is look at a system that was developed in accordance with (IAW) Mil-Std-483 and Mil-S-S27779A and estimate the difference in cost for a new (similar) system developed IAW DOD-STD-2167A, DOD-STD-2168 (Quality), DOD-STD-1803 (Software Development Integrity Program), DOD-STD-1785 (Security) and DOD-STD-882B (Safety). We are assuming that each standard is properly used and tailored (okay, that is a big assumption!). How much above the original cost can we expect for the new set of standards? Now, we know there are a great many other issues to this approach and we are working on those. For now, we would like to hear opinions, or even better, experience of the cost increase due to the standards. We also recognize that some of the standards are cost loaded up front for lifecycle savings and we will be taking that into account later. Thanks for your input. Jim Cardow Instructor of Software Engineering Air Force Institute of Technology Wright Patterson AFB, OH