Development of COSYSMO 3.0: An Extended, Unified Cost Estimating Model for Systems Engineering

Systems engineering continues to increase in importance. Therefore systems engineering practices need to continue to increase in rigor. One of these practices, critical to successful projects, is cost estimation. The parametric systems engineering cost estimating model COSYSMO 1.0 was introduced in 2005. Since then, some significant enhancements have been proposed. These include covering projects using development with reuse, development in the presence of requirements volatility, development for reuse, or development in a system-of-systems context. However, these enhancements have not been brought together into a single cost estimating model. The author’s recently completed parametric cost estimating model COSYSMO 3.0 does in fact include all these enhancements, plus many other detailed improvements to COSYSMO 1.0; furthermore, it’s an open model, allowing users to understand numerically exactly how its parameters affect cost estimates, and encouraging development of estimating tools. COSYSMO 3.0 will be presented, highlighting its coverage of these enhancements, and pointing out some of its unique properties.