2012
Improving the Reliability of Expert Opinion within Early Lifecycle Cost Estimation
Measurement & Analysis , Software Cost Estimates No Comments »
By Robert Stoddard,
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis Program
As
part of our research related to early acquisition lifecycle cost
estimation for the Department of Defense (DoD), my colleagues in the
SEI’s Software Engineering Measurement & Analysis initiative
and I began envisioning a potential solution that would rely heavily on
expert judgment of future possible program execution scenarios.
Previous to our work on cost estimation, many parametric cost models
required domain expert input, but, in our opinion, they did not address
alternative scenarios of execution that might occur from Milestone A onward. Our approach, known as Quantifying Uncertainty in Early Lifecycle Cost Estimation (QUELCE),
asks domain experts to provide judgment not only on uncertain cost
factors for a nominal program execution scenario, but also for the
drivers of cost factors across a set of anticipated scenarios. This blog
post describes our efforts to improve the accuracy and reliability of
expert judgment within this expanded role of early lifecycle cost estimation.
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