A Cost-Benefit Model for Software Development Environments (NOT KNOWN IF PUBLISHED BECAUSE AUTHOR HAS LEFT AT&T)

Past approaches to the evaluation of software development environments have concentrated on such technical criteria as functionality and ease of use, largely ignoring the economic issues that must be considered in any decision to install such as environment. However, in view of the expenditure of resources that is required to incorporate an environment into an existing development process, a framework for the cost-benefit analysis of environments is an essential input to this decision. In this paper we outline a two-fold approach to the cost-justification problem that consists of i) a cost model that fits naturally with technology transfer planning; and ii) a productivity impact model whose structure is consistent with effort estimation models such as COCOMO. As part of both models we propose the use of a new parameter, the integration constant, to quantify the level of cooperation (or antagonism) between the individual tools which make up the environment.