Software Size Estimation

Dr Hongyu Zhang

School of Computer Science and IT

Date and time: 11.30am-12.30pm, Friday 16th June, 2006

Venue: 10.08.04

Abstract:

Software size estimation has a crucial impact on software projects in the industry. Underestimates may lead to time pressures that may compromise full functional development and thorough testing of software. In contrast, overestimates can result in noncompetitive contract bids or over allocation of resources. This talk will discuss some of the current techniques and methods that are used for estimating the size of a software project. Some information required by existing software sizing methods is difficult to predict in the early stage of software development. Conceptual data model is widely used in the early stage of requirements analysis for information systems. We propose a novel LOC (Lines of Code) estimation method for information systems based on their conceptual data models by using multiple linear regression analysis. We have validated the method using samples from both the industry and open-source.

About the speaker:

Hongyu Zhang received the PhD degree in computer science from the School of Computing, National University of Singapore in 2003. He is currently a lecturer at the School of CS&IT, RMIT University, Australia. Prior to RMIT he was a research fellow at School of Computing, National University of Singapore, and an R&D engineer at IBM and Powermatic Data Systems Inc., Singapore. His current research is mainly in the area of software engineering, in particular, software reuse, software quality, and software metrics. He has published more than 20 research papers in a number of international journals and conferences proceedings. He has also acted as a reviewer for various journals and conferences. He is a member of the IEEE, the IEEE CS and the ACM. He was nominated for the upcoming Marquis’s Who’sWho in the World in 2007. This talk is largely based on a recent ICSE paper that hongyu co-authored. ICSE is a premier conference in the area of software engineering. This year’s acceptance rate is only 9%.

Seminar Organisation

Seminars are free and open to the general public. No booking is necessary. If you are interested in giving a presentation in this seminar series, or to make suggestions for speakers, please contact Xiaodong Li, the seminar co-ordinator.