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The ROI of systems engineering: Some quantitative results for software‐intensive systems
Author(s) -
Boehm Barry,
Valerdi Ricardo,
Honour Eric
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
systems engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.474
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1520-6858
pISSN - 1098-1241
DOI - 10.1002/sys.20096
Subject(s) - cocomo , software engineering , schedule , computer science , software , systems engineering , software project management , software development , return on investment , team software process , software system , engineering , software construction , operating system , production (economics) , economics , macroeconomics
This paper presents quantitative results on the return on investment of systems engineering (SE‐ROI) from an analysis of the 161 software projects in the COCOMO II database. The analysis shows that, after normalizing for the effects of other cost drivers, the cost difference between projects doing a minimal job of software systems engineering— as measured by the thoroughness of its architecture definition and risk resolution— and projects doing a very thorough job was 18% for small projects and 92% for very large software projects as measured in lines of code. The paper also presents applications of these results to project experience in determining ‘‘how much up front systems engineering is enough’’ for baseline versions of smaller and larger software projects, for both ROI‐driven internal projects and schedule‐driven outsourced systems of systems projects. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng