Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve communications through documentation, and to create a database for manufacturing. Designs made through CAD software help protect products and inventions when used in patent applications. CAD output is often in the form of electronic files for print, machining, or other manufacturing operations. The terms computer-aided drafting (CAD) and computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) are also used.
In software engineering and development, a software metric is a standard of measure of a degree to which a software system or process possesses some property. Even if a metric is not a measurement, often the two terms are used as synonyms. Since quantitative measurements are essential in all sciences, there is a continuous effort by computer science practitioners and theoreticians to bring similar approaches to software development. The goal is obtaining objective, reproducible and quantifiable measurements, which may have numerous valuable applications in schedule and budget planning, cost estimation, quality assurance, testing, software debugging, software performance optimization, and optimal personnel task assignments.
Source lines of code (SLOC), also known as lines of code (LOC), is a software metric used to measure the size of a computer program by counting the number of lines in the text of the program's source code. SLOC is typically used to predict the amount of effort that will be required to develop a program, as well as to estimate programming productivity or maintainability once the software is produced.
Barry William Boehm was an American software engineer, distinguished professor of computer science, industrial and systems engineering; the TRW Professor of Software Engineering; and founding director of the Center for Systems and Software Engineering at the University of Southern California. He was known for his many contributions to the area of software engineering.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to software engineering:
The Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) is a procedural software cost estimation model developed by Barry W. Boehm. The model parameters are derived from fitting a regression formula using data from historical projects.
Cost estimation models are mathematical algorithms or parametric equations used to estimate the costs of a product or project. The results of the models are typically necessary to obtain approval to proceed, and are factored into business plans, budgets, and other financial planning and tracking mechanisms.
The World Wide Web has become a major delivery platform for a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these Web applications exhibit complex behaviour and place some unique demands on their usability, performance, security, and ability to grow and evolve. However, a vast majority of these applications continue to be developed in an ad hoc way, contributing to problems of usability, maintainability, quality and reliability. While Web development can benefit from established practices from other related disciplines, it has certain distinguishing characteristics that demand special considerations. In recent years, there have been developments towards addressing these considerations.
In the context of software engineering, software quality refers to two related but distinct notions:
Cost estimation in software engineering is typically concerned with the financial spend on the effort to develop and test the software, this can also include requirements review, maintenance, training, managing and buying extra equipment, servers and software. Many methods have been developed for estimating software costs for a given project.
SEER for Software (SEER-SEM) is a project management application used to estimate resources required for software development.
The function point is a "unit of measurement" to express the amount of business functionality an information system provides to a user. Function points are used to compute a functional size measurement (FSM) of software. The cost of a single unit is calculated from past projects.
The Putnam model is an empirical software effort estimation model. The original paper by Lawrence H. Putnam published in 1978 is seen as pioneering work in the field of software process modelling. As a group, empirical models work by collecting software project data and fitting a curve to the data. Future effort estimates are made by providing size and calculating the associated effort using the equation which fit the original data.
Software sizing or software size estimation is an activity in software engineering that is used to determine or estimate the size of a software application or component in order to be able to implement other software project management activities. Size is an inherent characteristic of a piece of software just like weight is an inherent characteristic of a tangible material.
In project management, accurate estimates are the basis of sound project planning. Many processes have been developed to aid engineers in making accurate estimates, such as
In software development, effort estimation is the process of predicting the most realistic amount of effort required to develop or maintain software based on incomplete, uncertain and noisy input. Effort estimates may be used as input to project plans, iteration plans, budgets, investment analyses, pricing processes and bidding rounds.
Daniel D. Galorath is an American software developer, businessman and author. Galorath is the President and CEO of Galorath Incorporated and one of the chief developers of the project management software known as SEER-SEM.
PRICE Systems was founded in 1975 as a business within the RCA Corporation. It is generally acknowledged as the earliest developer of parametric cost estimation software.
Weighted Micro Function Points (WMFP) is a modern software sizing algorithm which is a successor to solid ancestor scientific methods as COCOMO, COSYSMO, maintainability index, cyclomatic complexity, function points, and Halstead complexity. It produces more accurate results than traditional software sizing methodologies, while requiring less configuration and knowledge from the end user, as most of the estimation is based on automatic measurements of an existing source code.
Bill Curtis is a software engineer best known for leading the development of the Capability Maturity Model and the People CMM in the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and for championing the spread of software process improvement and software measurement globally. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions to software process improvement and measurement. He was named to the 2022 class of ACM Fellows, "for contributions to software process, software measurement, and human factors in software engineering".