Contracting for IT Software - Case Study Example

15 April Contracting for I.T Software Successful planning and development of Information Technologyprojects has always been a subject of great concern for project managers, software developers and other stakeholders in the IT industry. One of the key areas in the successful implementation of an I.T project is to have an accurate estimate of the cost incurred in its development. In essence, the SLOC (Sources Lines of Code) and Function Points are some of crucial methods applied in the estimation of software project development costs (Mislick and Nussbaum 9).

The Sources Lines of Code (SLOC) entails counting of the total number of program source code that a programmer uses to come up with the targeted user functionalities. The SLOC is a method that plays a huge role in estimating project costs for both an existing program and a program that is yet to be built. This approach is more straightforward and less risky particularly when dealing with an existing project. Three types of SLOC methods are used in project costs estimation. These are the physical SLOC, physical carriage returns, and the Logical SLOC.

The physical SLOC is the most common in the development cost estimation process (Sudhakar 80). In the application of physical SLOC, one has to express the physical length of the code used by a programmer as seen by a physical eye. That is, the user applies this method by counting the lines of source code with the exclusion of comments and blank segments. To facilitate the counting process, a user builds automated counters of the physical lines of code. It is vital to note that the use of function points is another crucial method used in the estimation of IT software project costs.

Function point entails a unit of measure that is used to determine the quantity of operational or business functionalities within an information system. The function points provide a measure of a software size. In general, it measures the size of a software development project by quantifying the software functionalities required by the user on the basis of the logical design and functional specifications. The function points method plays a huge role in ensuring that there is a clear measure of a software system’s size and complexity to aid in determining its development cost.

Here, one function point represents one user required business function (Mislick and Nussbaum 66). It is essential to clarify the function point method can be used in the following way to determine the development costs of a software project. To be precise, delivery rate is one of the key ways applied in function point analysis. In this approach, development cost is estimated by determining the number project function points per work effort (function points/hr). That is by diving the total number of function points by the number of hours taken to complete them.

This gives the time required for the development of the software project (Sudhakar 80). To further aid in determining the development cost, the function point method provides another approach called Cost Rate. Cost rate provides the cost per function point(cost in $/function point) as agreed with the software programmer. In general, function points give a better and more accurate estimate of the project development cost (Mislick and Nussbaum 193). Works cited Mislick, Gregory and Nussbaum, Daniel.

Cost Estimation: Methods and Tools. , 2015. Print. Sudhakar, G P. Elements of Software Project Management. New Delhi: PHI Learning Private Limited, 2010. Print.