Re: LOC estimates for Ada Command and C

Re: LOC estimates for Ada Command and C

[bu.edu!inmet!stt]

Re: LOC estimates for Ada Command and Control (from dennis@tfsg.UUCP)

My personal favorite rule-of-thumb is 2.5-3 person-months/KLOC.

   1 person-month for design/initial documentation
   1 person-month for code/unit-test
   0.5-1 person-month for integration/system-test

I realize this isn't LOC/day, but months/KLOC, but I much
prefer inverting the numbers since they suddenly become
meaningful.  Noone writes X LOC in a day, and then 2X LOC in two days,
etc.  However, people do work some number of months on something of 
some given size.

So, for your 50KLOC, I would estimate 125 to 150 person months,
or 10 to 15 person years.  This number would come down if
some of the 50KLOC is generated by tools, or reused from
some earlier project, though integration testing can be longer
in such an environment if the tools are not fully robust,
or the reused code is not a perfect fit.

Also, this estimate can come down dramatically if you are talking
about a project involving just one or two expert programmers,
with relatively well-defined requirements and modest
documentation requirements.  Unfortunately, this is rarely the case...

Our experience with Ada has been that integration testing
is shorter (because most interface errors have been caught
earlier), while design is somewhat longer, than other languages.
It isn't so much that design for Ada is harder, but that one tends
to be inspired to do it more thoroughly.

S. Tucker Taft   stt@inmet.inmet.com