Effort Distribution

Each of the software project estimation method discussed in past lecture leads to estimates of person months needed to complete software establishment.  A recommended distribution of effort across the development and definition phases is often providing to as the 40-20-40 rule.  40 % or more of all effort is allocated to front end design and analysis tasks.  A same % is applied to back end testing. You can correctly infer which coding is de-emphasized.

This effort distribution should be used as only a guideline.  The characteristics of each project dictate the distribution of effort. Effort will be expended on project planning rarely accounts for more than two or three % of effort unless the plan organization and commits to huge expenditures with high risk.   The Requirements analysis may comprise 10 to 25   % of project effort.  The Effort expended on prototyping or analysis should rise in direct proportion with project complexity and size.  A range of 20 to 25 % of effort is normally applied to software design. The Time will be expended for design review and subsequent iteration must also be considered because of effort applied to software design the code should follow with relatively little hard.  The range of 15 to 20 % of overall effort can be achieved. The Testing and subsequent debugging can account for 30 to   40 % of software development effort.   Software criticality often dictates the amount of testing which is required.  If software is human rated for example software failure can result in loss of life even higher percentages will be considered.