Ada productivity in LOC/hour

[mikeb@ssd.fsi.com (Mike Bates)]

I raise this topic with a great bit of trepidation; nearly every word
in the subject line can be (and has been) nitpicked to death.  (E.g.,
What is an Ada line of code?  Is it a valid measure of productivity?)

My question is simple: What is the current conventional wisdom on
typical Ada productivity expressed as source line of code per
man-hour?  Are there any recent studies of productivity that could
substantiate such a rule of thumb?

I am aware of the CTA, Inc., study of several years ago that pegged
Ada productivity at about 10 LOC/8 man-hours.  Has this been
superseded?

To narrow the question a bit, let me define the purpose of the
measure, the application domain and the terms.

My purpose in requesting this information is to have a rule of thumb
for estimating schedule and hours when the approximate size of the
final product is known.  Don't bother telling me that this is a
useless measure.  It doesn't matter; I need to be able to talk about
productivity in these terms.

The domain is hard-realtime, mission-critical software, developed
under DOD-STD-2167A for the DOD.

Man-hours would include requirements analysis, design, coding, unit
test, integration, and acceptance test -- the whole software effort
from specification to acceptance.

You can define "line of code" any way you like.  "Line of code" should
definitely include declarations as well as executable code.  (I usually
define line of code as any source line that isn't a comment or empty.
Provided that a programmer doesn't go overboard with formatting, there
shouldn't be much difference between that measurement and counting
semicolons -- not enough difference to skew the productivity numbers
significantly.)

Thanks for any help.




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Mike Bates               FlightSafety International, Simulation Systems Div.
Principal Engineer       2700 North Hemlock Circle
Computer Systems Group   Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 74012
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