A method of activity-based software maintenance cost estimation for package software

摘要

This paper defines software maintenance activities and develops a model for maintenance cost estimation of package software. First, we classified software maintenance activities which were collected from the literature reviews. Second, we developed a cost structure for package software maintenance based on the identified activities. Third, the activity-based software maintenance cost estimation model was developed based on the software maintenance activities and cost structure. Fourth, we defined the adjustment factors for the software maintenance cost estimation model to improve the accuracy of the developed model. Finally, the developed model was verified using actual data from software maintenance projects. The proposed model showed reliable performance in terms of the mean magnitude of relative error and prediction quality. Therefore, the proposed model is suitable for setting budgets and predicting costs associated with package software maintenance projects.