2012 Third International Conference on Computer and Communication Technology
SRS Based Estimation of Software Maintenance Effort
Aprna Tripathi1, Bhuvnesh Kumar2, Ashish Sharma2, Dharmender Singh Kushwaha1
(rcs1051, dsk)@mnnit.ac.in, (kumar.bhuvnesh.cs, sharma.asb)@gmail.com
Abstract—Software maintenance effort estimation has always
been a challenge for the software practitioners, as it consumes
about half of the overall development costs. The effort required
to develop or maintain software depend on the complexity of
yet to be developed software. The proposed measure estimates
the requirement-based complexity based on SRS document of
yet to be developed software for systematic and early
prediction of software maintenance effort using Software
Requirements Specifications (SRS) document of the proposed
software. The result obtained validates that, the proposed
maintenance measure is a comprehensive one and compares
well with various other prevalent measures proposed in the
past. The computation of proposed maintenance effort
estimation involves least overhead as compared to others.
Keywords-requirement based complexity; requirement based
maintenance complexity; requirement based maintenance effort
estimation
I. INTRODUCTION
Software maintenance is a post development activity but
most of the times it consumes 40-70% of the overall
development costs [10]. This paper proposes a measure for
early estimation of software maintenance effort using
software requirements written based on recommendations of
IEEE 830-1998 document for the generation of SRS of the
proposed software. The attributes from SRS of the proposed
software are captured to compute the improved requirement
based complexity as described in [7]. Since, an SRS acts as a
verifiable document [1], estimation of maintenance effort
based on SRS will be systematic, less complex, faster and
comprehensive one. Further, the maintenance effort
estimation proposals can be classified into three broad
categories like model based maintenance effort estimation,
function-point based maintenance effort estimation and code
based maintenance effort estimation.
The proposed measure considers software requirements
written in standard IEEE 830:1998 [1] format in order to
obtain effective and precise result. Hence, the strength of the
measure lies in computation of requirement based
complexity from requirement engineering document prior to
estimation of software maintenance effort.
II. RELATED WORKS
During the last few decades, various models, methods
and techniques have been developed for the estimation of
software maintenance effort. The work presented in this
paper is based on SRS. The paper also considers technical
and environmental factors. F. Niessink and H. van Vliet [3]
proposes a variant of the function-point analysis to remedy
some of its shortcomings. Albrecht [4] discusses the
function-points calculation for size of the software. Boehm
978-0-7695-4872-2/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCCT.2012.38
[5] discusses Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) and
computes annual maintenance effort using software
development effort and annual change traffic. Leung [6]
discusses a method to estimate project effort using analogy.
Sharma and Kushwaha [7] discuss the improved requirement
based complexity (IRBC). Gill and Kemerer [8] discuss the
cyclomatic complexity density and gives relation between
productivity and size of the software system in source lines
of code.
III. COMPLEXITY COMPUTATION FROM IEEE:SRS
DOCUMENT
It has been established that the complexity of the code
has a direct bearing on the amount of maintenance effort [5].
For accurate and systematic estimation of maintenance
effort, this paper uses an improved requirement based
complexity (IRBC) measure [7], which is derived based on
the recommendations of IEEE 830:1998 SRS document [1]
and it is mathematically expressed as:
IRBC = ((PC × PCA) + DCI + IFC + SFC) × SDLC
Where IRBC = Improved Requirement Based
Complexity; PC = Product Complexity; PCA = Personal
Complexity Attributes; DCI = Design Constraints Imposed;
IFC = Interface Complexity; SFC = System Feature
Complexity and SDLC = Software Deployment Location
Complexity.
IV. PROPOSED APPROACH FOR MAINTENANCE EFFORT
ESTIMATION
The effort required to repair a defect in analysis phase is
much less than that in design or implementation phase. This
defect repair ratio increases heavily from analysis phase to
implementation phase.
Hence, it is advisable to invest more effort in early
phases of software development life cycle to reduce the
maintenance costs. To move a step closer, the proposed
maintenance effort estimation measure empirically estimates
the software maintenance effort to reduce the maintenance
costs.
Requirement Based Maintenance Complexity (RBMC)
IRBC [7] comprises of all the attributes that are sufficient
to compute function points [2] for any software. The function
point measure includes five parameters i.e. external input,
external output, interfaces, file and inquiry. In addition to the
parameters used by function point analysis (FPA) [2], there
are certain other parameters also for any software
requirement. However, IRBC makes use of an exhaustive set
of parameters for its computation in order to compute the
Requirement Based Maintenance Complexity (RBMC)
measure. To estimate RBMC, we require Value Adjustment
154
Factors (VAF) pertaining to the maintenance activity. The KNCSLOC
ten VAFs are divided into three categories based on different RBMEE = PM
Productivity
perspectives viz. people, product and process. The VAF of a
software maintenance project is represented [9] as:
V. RESULTS AND VALIDATION
3 k
scores×Wf Wg
VAF= ¦[¦ (
100
)×(
100
)] The result obtained for ten different SRSs shown in
figure establishes that the maintenance effort computation in
group=1 factors=1
Where Wg and Wf are the weighting values of each person-months by the proposed approach is more realistic.
characteristic group and their factors, respectively. Scores Belady-Lehman (PM) Boehm (PM)
are measured by the software maintenance project manager Schaefer (PM) SMPEEM (PM)
and vary from 0 (the lowest degree) to 5 (the highest degree). AMEffMo (PM) Function Point (PM)

Maintenance Effort in Person-months

Since every attribute of IRBC is functionally dependent
on VAFs. Hence, we propose requirement based
maintenance complexity (RBMC) as a product of IRBC and
VAF. This is expressed as:
RBMC = IRBC × VAF
Now, the obtained RBMC is equivalent to the functional
size of the system, the size in terms of lines of code can be
computed easily from [10]. Finally, we can compute the
maintenance effort for yet to be developed software.
Requirement Based Maintenance Effort Estimation
(RBMEE)
In order to compute maintenance effort for the proposed
software, we first compute size and productivity in terms of
kilo lines of code (KLOC). Since RBMC is equivalent to the
functional size of the system. Hence, size in terms of kilo
lines of code (KNCSLOC) [18] is represented as:
RBMC × Size
KNCSLOC =
1000
Where KNCSLOC is the size of the software system in
Kilo Lines of Code (KLOC) and Size is described as size of
language in which the proposed software is to be developed
[18]. KNCSLOC is a significant factor that rests on the fact
that since the developer has code to understand, but
maintaining that code would be more difficult. Hence, the
productivity directly depends upon the size of the software
system and can be obtained from [8], is expressed as:
Productivity = 5.52 + 0.346 × KNCSLOC
Where Productivity is the maintenance team productivity
in KLOC/PM.
Now, in order to compute software maintenance effort
for the proposed software, it is necessary to know the two
significant parameters, first, the prior knowledge of the size
of the system in KNCSLOC and second, the productivity of
the maintenance team. Hence in this direction, we have
already derived the contributing measures i.e. KNCSLOC,
for the size of the system in KLOC and Productivity, for the
estimation of maintenance team productivity. The
maintenance effort and the productivity have an inverse
relationship with each other. Hence, the maintenance effort
can be defined as the ratio of size and productivity of the
proposed software. The requirement based maintenance
effort estimate (RBMEE) in person-months (PM) for the
proposed software is expressed as:
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
No. of Programs
Figure 1. Overall comparison between RBMEE V/s other measures.
VI. CONCLUSION
The proposed work computes the requirement based
maintenance effort estimate based on IEEE Std 830-1998 of
requirement engineering document, soon after freezing the
requirements. The robustness of the proposed measure is
evaluated by comparing it with different established and
prevalent measures of maintenance effort estimation.
REFERENCES
[1] Software Engineering Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer
Society, “IEEE Recommended Practice for Software Requirements
Specifications,” IEEE Inc. NY, USA, 1998.
[2] Symons C. R., “Function Point Analysis: Difficulties and
Improvements,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol.14,
No.1, pp. 2-11, Jan. 1988.
[3] Niessink F. and van Vliet H., “Predicting Maintenance Effort with
Function Points,” In M. J. Harrold and G. Visaggio, editors,
International Conference on Software Maintenance, pages 32-39,
Bari, Italy, October 1-3, 1997.
[4] Albrecht A. J., “Measuring Application Development Productivity,”
Proceedings SHARE/GUIDE IBM Applications Development
Symposium, Monterey, CA., pages 83-92, Oct 14-17, 1979.
[5] Boehm B. W., “Software Engineering Economics,” Prentice-Hall:
Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1981; 767.
[6] Leung, H.K.N, “Estimating maintenance effort by analogy,”
Empirical Software Engineering, 7(2), 157-175, 2002.
[7] Sharma A., Kushwaha D.S., “Complexity Measure based on
Requirement Engineering Document and its Validation,” Int’l Conf.
on Computer & Communication Technology, 2010, pp. 608-615.
[8] Gill G. K., Kemerer C. F., “Cyclomatic Complexity Density and
Software Maintenance Productivity,” IEEE Transactions on Software
Engineering, Vol. 17, No. 12, December 1991.
[9] Ahn Y., Suh J., Kim S. and Kim H., “The Software Maintenance
Project Effort Estimation Model based on Function Points,” J. Softw.
Maint. Evol. : Res. Pract. 2003; 15 : 71-85.
[10] Aggrawal K. K. and Singh Y., Software Engineering, 4th Edition,
New Age International.

155