COnstructive COst MOdel II (COCOMO III) is a model that allows one to estimate the cost, effort, and schedule when planning a new software development activity. COCOMO III is under development as an extension of the COCOMO II model.
COCOMO III will meet the following use cases:
- Making investment or other financial decisions involving a software development effort
- Setting project budgets and schedules as a basis for planning and control
- Deciding on or negotiating tradeoffs among software cost, schedule, functionality, performance or quality factors
- Making software cost and schedule risk management decisions
- Deciding which parts of a software system to develop, reuse, lease, or purchase
- Making legacy software inventory decisions: what parts to modify, phase out, outsource, etc
- Setting mixed investment strategies to improve organization’s software capability, via reuse, tools, process maturity, outsourcing, etc
- Deciding how to implement a process improvement strategy, such as that provided in the SEI CMM
The original COCOMO model was first published by Dr. Barry Boehm in 1981, and reflected the software development practices of the day.