Barry Boehm

Barry Boehm's book Software Engineering Economics 1981, Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-822122-7 documents his Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO). It relates software development effort for a program, in man-years T, to source lines of code (SLOC).

For a single software developer, k can be factored out by using more than 1 SLOC data point. In this case, x can be a fraction like 0.1 or 0.25.

• Note: since programmers are not interchangeable parts, Brooks' Law applies:
  • Adding programmers to a late project makes it later.
  • Thus this formula is best applied to stable software development teams which have completed multiple projects.

Boehm also identified the spiral model of development, in which the phases of development are repeatedly revisited. This iterative software development process influenced extreme programming.

Boehm worked at RAND, TRW, Inc, DARPA, and is currently TRW Professor of Software Engineering, Computer Science Department, and Director, USC Center for Software Engineering. Recent awards include the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence (1992), the ASQC Lifetime Achievement Award (1994), and the ACM Distinguished Research Award in Software Engineering (1997). He is an AIAA Fellow, an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.