Towards incorporating human factors in the software project cost control models – Preliminary study
Keywords:
human factors, software competency, software cost control, earned value management, EVMAbstract
Controlling software cost is crucial to complete projects within the planned budgets. Unfortunately, the existing software cost control models; especially the earned value management system (EVM) experience some limitations. These models, mainly focus on factors such as time and cost while ignoring the related human factors. Since software is delivered by people and affected by their competencies, it is expected that their associated attributes would be quantified and incorporated in such models. Although many papers discussed the human factor issues, however, very few suggested quantified indices to model such factors. This paper aims at introducing the Developer Competency Index (DCI) and Team Competency Index (TCI) as a quantification of the human skills needed by the software engineers. Function Point Analysis (FPA) is extensively used in the calculation process. Moreover, using data drawn from five actual projects, the study shows how these indices are related to the cost of software reworks and how they can be used to monitor and control the team performance throughout the project lifecycle.
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