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Ada's impact: a quantitative assessment

Author:

Donald J. ReiferAuthors Info & Claims

SIGAda '87: Proceedings of the 1987 annual ACM SIGAda international conference on Ada

Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/317500.317501

Published: 08 December 1987 Publication History

Abstract

This paper reports an update to the results of its one year study conducted by RCI in 1986 for five of its clients to determine the impact of Ada™ on software cost, productivity and quality. The paper begins by discussing the study's goals and the approach used to realize them. It then summarizes the actual experience over 41 projects which delivered over 15 million lines of Ada™ code for a variety of applications, mostly real-time. It presents facts and figures drawn from a detailed statistical analysis of the resulting Ada™ cost, productivity and quality database in the following five areas: learning curve impacts, distribution of effort, error rates, cost and productivity experience and reuse potential. These data and the experience they encompass are then used to develop conclusions and recommendations relative to formulating Ada™ cost estimating models and realistic transition, training and investment strategies.

References

[1]

William G. Cheadle, "Ada Parametric Sizing, Costing and Scheduling," Proceedi nqs of ISPA Ninth Annual Conference, May 1987, pp. 415-434.

[2]

Randall W. Jensen, "Related Productivity Impact of Near-Term Ada Use in Software System Development," Proceedings of ISPA Seventh Annual Conference, May 1985, pp. 43 -49.

[3]

Andrew C. Najber9 and Richard D. Healy, The Impact of Ada on Software Development Costs, TASC Report No. TR- 4612-5-2, 15 October 1984.

[4]

Donald J. Reifer, Ada's Impact' A Quantitative Assessment, RCI Technical Note No. RCI-TN-255, 10 March 1987.

[5]

Barry W. Boehm, Software Enqineerinq Economics, Prentice-Hall, 1981.

Digital Library

[6]

Virginia L. Castor and David Preston, "Programmers Produce More with Ada", Defense Electronics, June 1987, pp. 165- 172.

[7]

Ware Myers, "Ada' First Users - Pleased; Prospective Users - Still Hesitant," Computer, March 1987, pp. 68- 73.

Digital Library

[8]

IEEE, Standards Glossary of Software Enqineerinq Terminoloqv, IEEE Std. 729- 1983, 1983.

[9]

United States Air Force, Air Force Systems Command Software Manaqement Indicators, AFSC Pamphlet 800-43, 31 January 1986.

[10]

Elizabeth K. Bailey, Thomas P. Frazier and John W. Bailey, A Descriptive Evaluation of Software Cost-Estimation Models, Institute for Defense Analyses Paper No. P-1979, October 1986.

[11]

Barry W. Boehm, "Understanding and Controlling Software Costs," Proceedinqs of IFIP ... {86, North Holland, September 1986, pp. 703-718.

[12]

Donald J. Reifer, Ada and Its Imoact On Cost Modeling, RCI Technical Note No. 275, 7 July 1987.

[13]

Donald J. Reifer, SoftCost-R: User Experience and Lessons Learned At The Aqe Of One, Reifer Consultants Technical Note No. RCI-TN-228 (to be published in Journal of Systems and Software), 6 March 1987.

Digital Library

[14]

Tony Orne, "Project Management Experience of Ada", Ada User, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1986.

[15]

Donald J. Reifer, "Predicting the Costs of Ada Software Developments," Proceedinqs of NiSQP Software Cost & Quality Control Conference, 22 September 1987.

[16]

Donald J. Reifer, SoftCost-Ada: An Overview, RCI lechnical Note No. RCI-IN- 268, 2 May 1987.

[17]

Donald J. Reifer, "Predicting the Size of Real-Time Systems: An Update," Proceedinqs of NISQiP Software Cost & Quality Control Conference, 22 September 1987.

[18]

Meal J. Brenner, et. al., A Plan for Collectinq Ada Software Development Cost, Schedule and Environment Data, lecolote Research Report No. CR-0134/1, 2 April 1987.

[19]

Donald J. Reifer, "Bounding and Dealing with Ada Software Development Risks," Proceedinqs of NSIA Fal 1 Joint Conference, October 1987.

[20]

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., "No Silver Bullet, Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering," Computer, April 1987, pp. 10-19.

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Cited By

Reifer DEngle C(1990)SoftCost-AdaProceedings of the conference on TRI-ADA '9010.1145/255471.255583(472-482)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/255471.255583
Reifer D(1989)Ada cost issues and answersProceedings of the conference on TRI-Ada '8810.1145/76619.77043(525-542)Online publication date: 1-Jul-1989
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/76619.77043
Reifer DForeman JEngle C(1989)Workstation/APSE productivity study resultsProceedings of the conference on Tri-Ada '89: Ada technology in context: application, development, and deployment10.1145/74261.74272(148-162)Online publication date: 3-Jan-1989
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/74261.74272
Show More Cited By

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Ada's impact: a quantitative assessment

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGAda '87: Proceedings of the 1987 annual ACM SIGAda international conference on Ada

December 1987

240 pages

ISBN:0897912438

DOI:10.1145/317500

Chairman:
Benjamin M. Brosgol
Alsys, Inc.

Copyright © 1987 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 08 December 1987

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Cited By

Reifer DEngle C(1990)SoftCost-AdaProceedings of the conference on TRI-ADA '9010.1145/255471.255583(472-482)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/255471.255583
Reifer D(1989)Ada cost issues and answersProceedings of the conference on TRI-Ada '8810.1145/76619.77043(525-542)Online publication date: 1-Jul-1989
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/76619.77043
Reifer DForeman JEngle C(1989)Workstation/APSE productivity study resultsProceedings of the conference on Tri-Ada '89: Ada technology in context: application, development, and deployment10.1145/74261.74272(148-162)Online publication date: 3-Jan-1989
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/74261.74272
McGarry FEsker LQuimby KSedewitz EQuann E(1989)Evolution of Ada technology in a production software environmentProceedings of the sixth Washington Ada symposium on Ada10.1145/326490.326521(135-143)Online publication date: 1-Jul-1989
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/326490.326521
Guennouni JJohnson JGill H(1988)Using Ada as a language for a CAD tool developmentProceedings of the fifth Washington Ada symposium on Ada10.1145/339938.339967(85-95)Online publication date: 1-Jul-1988
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/339938.339967
Kane PLeuci NReifer D(1988)A cost model for estimating the cost of developing software in the Ada programming language[1988] Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Volume II: Software track10.1109/HICSS.1988.11879(782-790)Online publication date: 1988
https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.1988.11879

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