New Contributions

New contributions that has been made to this field of software engineering

The original COCOMO model was first published by Dr. Barry Boehm in 1981, and reflected the software development practices of the day. In the ensuing decade and a half, software development techniques changed dramatically. These changes included a move away from mainframe overnight batch processing to desktop-based real-time turnaround; a greatly increased emphasis on reusing existing software and building new systems using off-the-shelf software components; and spending as much effort to design and manage the software development process as was once spent creating the software product.

This required us to reinvent the model for the 1990s. After several years and the combined efforts of USC-CSE, IRUS at UC Irvine, and the COCOMO II Project Affiliate Organizations, the result is COCOMO II, a revised cost estimation model reflecting the changes in professional software development practice that have come about since the 1970s.