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An empirical study of the Cobb-Douglas production function properties of software development effort

Published: 01 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper we study whether software development effort exhibits Cobb-Douglas functional form with respect to team size and software size. We empirically test this relationship using real-world software engineering data set containing over 500 software projects. The results of our experiments indicate that the hypothesized Cobb-Douglas function form for software development effort with respect to team size and software size is true. We also find increasing returns to scale relationship between software size and team size with software development effort.

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Cited By

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  • (2021)Quantitative software project management with mixed dataJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.234833:6Online publication date: 1-Jun-2021
  • (2018)Using Nonlinear Quantile Regression for the Estimation of Software CostHybrid Artificial Intelligent Systems10.1007/978-3-319-92639-1_35(422-432)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2018
  • (2015)Ensemble based point and confidence interval forecasting in software engineeringExpert Systems with Applications: An International Journal10.1016/j.eswa.2015.08.00242:24(9441-9448)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2015
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Information & Contributors

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Published In

cover image Information and Software Technology
Information and Software Technology  Volume 50, Issue 12
November, 2008
125 pages

Publisher

Butterworth-Heinemann

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 November 2008

Author Tags

  1. Cost models
  2. Forecasting
  3. Project management

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Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Quantitative software project management with mixed dataJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.234833:6Online publication date: 1-Jun-2021
  • (2018)Using Nonlinear Quantile Regression for the Estimation of Software CostHybrid Artificial Intelligent Systems10.1007/978-3-319-92639-1_35(422-432)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2018
  • (2015)Ensemble based point and confidence interval forecasting in software engineeringExpert Systems with Applications: An International Journal10.1016/j.eswa.2015.08.00242:24(9441-9448)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2015
  • (2015)Benchmarking software development productivity of CMMI level 5 projectsInformation Technology and Management10.1007/s10799-015-0234-416:3(235-251)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2015
  • (2012)A distributed problem-solving framework for probabilistic software effort estimationExpert Systems: The Journal of Knowledge Engineering10.1111/j.1468-0394.2011.00607.x29:5(492-505)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2012
  • (2011)The study of resource allocation among software development phasesAdvances in Software Engineering10.1155/2011/5792922011(6-6)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2011
  • (2010)Sensitivity of results to different data quality meta-data criteria in the sample selection of projects from the ISBSG datasetProceedings of the 6th International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering10.1145/1868328.1868348(1-9)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2010

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