DEVELOPMENT OF A SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE COST ESTIMATION MODEL: 4 TH GL PERSPECTIVE

International Journal of Technical Research and Applications e-ISSN: 2320-8163,
www.ijtra.com Volume 2, Issue 6 (Nov-Dec 2014), PP. 65-68
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DEVELOPMENT OF A SOFTWARE
MAINTENANCE COST ESTIMATION MODEL:
4TH
GL PERSPECTIVE
Mohammad Islam1, Dr. Vinodani Katiyar2
1
Research Scholar, Shri Venkateshwara University, Gajraula, UP, India
2
Professor, SRM, University, Lucknow, UP, India
1
mohdislam3@gmail.com, 2
drvinodani@gmail.com
ABSTRACT- The software industry has had significant progress
in recent years. The entire life of software includes two phases:
Production and Maintenance. Software maintenance cost is
increasingly growing and estimates showed that about 90%, if
software life cost is related to its maintenance phase. Extraction
and considering the factors affecting software maintenance cost
help to estimate the cost and reduce it by controlling the factors.
Cost estimation of maintenance phase is necessary to predict the
reliability, improve the productivity, project planning, controlling
and adaptability of the software. Though there are various models
to estimate the maintenance cost of traditional software like
COCOMO, SLIM, Function Point etc., but till now there is no
such model to estimate the maintenance cost using fourth
generation language environment. Software maintenance will
continue to exist in the fourth generation environment, as systems
will still be required to evolve. In this kind of situation there is
needed to develop a model to estimate the maintenance cost using
fourth generation environment. We propose a systematic
approach and development for software maintenance cost
estimation model using fourth generation language environment
on the basis of COCOMO II. This model is based on three
parameters: SMCE with Fourth Generation Language
Environment, ACT (Annual Change Traffic), Technical and Non-
Technical factors which affect the maintenance cost. The
favorable results closely matching and it can be achieved by using
model implementation.
Keywords- Cost Estimation, Software Maintenance, Fourth
Generation Language Environment, Cost affecting factors
(Technical and Non-Technical), Improved Cost Estimation model,
ACT (Annual Change Traffic).
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Cost Estimation
In recent years software has become the most expensive
exponent of computer system projects. The bulk of the cost of
software development is due to the human effort and most
maintenance cost estimation methods focus on this aspect and
give estimates in terms of Person-Months. Accurate software
cost estimates are critical to both development and customers.
They can be used for generating request for proposals, contract
negotiations, scheduling, monitoring and control. Cost
estimation is an imprecise science, as there are many variables
such as human, technical, environmental and political which
can affect the ultimate costs of software and the resources
required to maintain it. Some of the factors appear more
obvious than other. To fully estimate software maintenance
costs these factors need to be identified and weights assigned
to them.
Underestimating the cost may result in management
approving proposed systems that then exceed their budgets
with underdeveloped functions and poor quality and failure to
complete on time. Overestimating may result in too many
resources committed to the project or during contract bidding
which can lead to loss of jobs. Accurate cost estimation is
important because:
 Projects can be easier to manage and control when
resources are better matched to real needs.
 It can help to classify and prioritize development
projects with respect to an overall business plan.
 Customers expect actual development costs to be in
line with estimated costs.
 It can be used to determine what resources to commit
to the project and how well these resources will be
used.
B. Software Maintenance
Software maintenance is an important activity in software
engineering. Over the decades, software maintenance costs
have been continually reported to account for a large majority
of software costs. Software maintenance is defined as the
process of changing, modifying, updating, repairing or existing
operational software, but leaving its primary functions intact
(Boehm, 1981, pp.54-55). This definition excludes major
enhancements (Boehm, 1981, pp.534-535) and hence differs
from Swanson’s typology (Swanson and Chapin, 1995). In
other words the maintenance is about actions taken when a
product does not function properly. Software maintenance
workload is very large; although in different applications of its
maintenance cost vary widely but averagely, the maintenance
cost of large software development costs as high as 4 times.
Several surveys indicate that software maintenance consumes
60% to 80% of the total life cost; these surveys also report that
maintenance costs are largely due to enhancements (often 75%
- 80%), rather than corrections (Canfora-2000). The relative
cost for maintaining software and managing its total cost
(Koskinen-2010). International Electro-technical Commission
activities in accordance with the needs of software
maintenance, it will be divided into the following five
categories: (a) Repair of maintenance (b) Preventive
maintenance (c) Integrity of maintenance (d) Adaptability
maintenance and (e) Evolution of maintenance.
C. Fourth GL Environment
The term fourth generation language refers to a class of
data processing language developed in the mid 1970’s that
offer simplified expressions for common data processing tasks.
These languages allow for systems development in
significantly less time than with third generation language.
Fourth generation languages were developed to make life
easier for the application programmer. With most fourth
generation languages there are a set of predefined defaults
which the compiler or interpreter uses to make assumptions
about the user’s needs. One of the advantages of fourth
generation languages is that it allows parts to be rewritten more
quickly than with a third generation language.
Martin [MARTIN83] has said that a characteristic of a
fourth generation language is that an analyst can obtain results
faster than he could write specifications for a programmer. The

66 | P a g e
analyst then works hand in hand with the user, creating what
the user asks for and refining it in a step by step fashion to
adapt it better to the user’s needs.
In the United Kingdom 45% of installations were making
significant use of fourth generation languages in 1986, and a
further 30% were planning to introduce them in the near future
[IDPM86], so in a few years software maintenance using
fourth generation language is likely to be a major factor to
many companies.
Although the term fourth generation language is in
common use, they consist of a range of products, and it would
be more applicable. Fourth generation languages are not just
one type of tool, they consist of a wide range of products, and
to enable them to be compared, it is necessary to classify them
into categories. A report by the Institute of Data Processing
managers [IDPM86] produced a list of 4 classifications of
fourth generation languages and this is produced below:
(a) Application builders (b) Transaction processing builders
(c) Management information systems (d) End user
products.
II. RELATED RESEARCH WORKS
Software cost estimation has attracted tremendous
attention from the software engineering research community. A
number of studies have been published to address cost
estimation related problems, such as software sizing, software
productivity factors, cost estimation models for software
development and maintenance.
 Mr. Boehm studied the various cost factors in the simple or
complex public system. The results of his research are
published in details in the book (Software Architectures:
Critical Success Factors and Cost Drivers). Many
researchers focused on models and different methods of
cost estimation, but what is important is to update and
review each model factors. These models include analog
models such as the Delphi method or estimations based on
professional experience, model such as analysis of
performance indicators and models of machine learning
algorithms including neural network, genetic programming,
fuzzy logic and many other models.
 Henry Raymond (2010) in a study used the estimation
techniques along with the knowledge of the project team,
project manager and the president to design a predictive
model for estimating the software. This model suggests that
the maintenance plays an important role in the success of
IT projects. Though the effective use of technology for
estimating the time and cost is necessary but is not
sufficient. To predict the exact time and cost, the
management needs the knowledge, knowledge integration
and sharing it.
 The studies by Sneed and Jorgensen (2009) provided us
with a sound basis for our approach by identifying: (a) the
kind of factors being critical to the success of a
maintenance operation and (b) evaluating the precision of
different types of arithmetic models. Nevertheless, most
models and approaches proposed were either not easily
generalizes due to highly specialized scenarios, too abstract
to implement or not meeting our requirements. In
particular, the challenge to predict maintenance costs for a
huge number of heterogeneous applications turns out to
differ much from estimating maintenance cost benefit for a
single application or a single system being under
development.
 Many estimation models have been proposed and applied
over the years. The review of major estimation models that
have been development, continued to be applied and
marketed by respective developers, these models including
SLIM, SEER-SEM, PRICE-S, Knowledge Plan and
COCOMO. There are several reasons for this selection:
First, they represent the core set of models that was
development in the early 1980’s and 1990’s. Second, they
are still being investigated and used widely in practice and
literature. There long robustness and usefulness. Third,
these models perform estimation for a broad range of
software development and maintenance activities, covering
a number of phases of software lifecycle such as
requirements, architecture, implementation, testing and
maintenance.
 Although the area of software maintenance estimation has
received less attention as compared to that of new
development, given the important of software maintenance,
a number of models have been introduced and applied to
estimating the maintenance costs. These models address
diverse sets of software maintenance work, covering, error
corrections, functional enhancements, technical renovations
and reengineering. They can be roughly classified into three
types based on the granularity level of the estimation focus:
Phase, Release and Task Level maintenance estimation
models.
III. PROPOSED SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE COST
ESTIMATION MODEL
COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) is used as a base
model to estimate the cost of software project. This model was
developed by Barry W. Boehm and published in 1981 using
data collected from 63 projects. We proposed a systematic
approach for software maintenance cost estimation model
using fourth generation language environment on the basis of
COCOMO II. This model is based on three specific
parameters: SMCE with Fourth Generation Language
Environment, ACT (Annual Change Traffic), Technical and
Non-Technical factors which affect the maintenance cost. The
model which we have proposed is shown below:
(Implementation of Modeling Process)
This model proposes the approach to estimate maintenance
cost of software. This process can be processed in two ways.
Firstly if the work is of only maintenance then works on
Software Maintenance Cost Estimation (SMCE) with 4-GL
Environment. Then depending on technical and non technical

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factors we will be able to estimate the cost of maintenance of
the software. If we are familiar with the development process
of the subject software then flow of model will include its
Project Features. Project feature includes selected model
adjustment and application with its characteristic; Annual
Change Traffic could be estimated using the History Table
which includes the database. Maintenance cost includes the
software maintenance cost estimation using fourth generation
languages environment with the help of weights factors.
Maintenance cost could be estimated using the result of ACT
report, weights of technical and non-technical factors and
development cost.
To estimates the software maintenance cost, there are three
main parameters used:
(a) Software Maintenance Cost Estimation with Fourth
Generation Language Environment.
(b) Existing Technical and Non-Technical Factors.
(c) ACT (Annual Change Traffic).
A. Software Maintenance Cost using Forth Generation
Languages.
Software maintenance is consuming vast quantities of data
processing resources which have meant that new software
cannot be produced quickly enough. One solution to this
problem has been the use of fourth generation languages which
allow software to be developed more quickly than would
otherwise be the case. This change has led to an increase in the
amount of software to be maintained. Grindley [IDPM86]
reported that some companies with experience of fourth
generation languages found it economically sensible to
consider rewriting their systems rather than maintaining and
patching existing software. There are several types of effect
which this move to fourth generation languages can have on
software maintenance:
 Simple hidden errors can be avoided, a fourth generation
language can deal with certain aspects of the system
automatically, and for example it can determine the first
and last records.
 Many fourth generation languages are linked to data
management systems with built in data dictionaries. The
programmer cannot misrepresent the data or fail to declare
variables.
 Many fourth generation languages are self documenting.
Poor documentation is likely to be a cause of maintenance
difficulties with third generation languages.
 Fourth generation language make the understandability of
a program clearer, and therefore easier for maintenance by
the third person.
 Many fourth generation languages disallow ill-structured
program constructs which can cause trouble later.
B. Factors Affecting Software Maintenance Cost.
Software maintenance costs affect the main factors.
Technical Factors
 Maintenance Staff Ability: Maintenance is a highly human
intensive activity. It requires a lot of training to make new
people adept in maintenance task of a software product or
service. The maintenance effort and cost effort increase
substantially if the team members are shuffled across groups
very often or if they keep leaving their jobs quite frequently.
Also maintenance staff ability in terms of maintenance
experience can have significant impact on the maintenance
activity.
 Internal Complexity: It defines how much the internal
working of component or system is complex. A weight value
0 means easy- to- integrate components are available that has
very simple interface as well as simple implementation.
 Documentation Quality. If the documentation is poor or
system code or design is poorly documented, then it will be
very costly to find and correct any errors that are present in
the system. This observation points towards the fact that
documentation quality also has a serious effect on
maintenance effort.
 Testing Quality. As the experience of software engineering
has shown that the number of errors can be significantly
reduced by applying an effective testing strategy. With
reduced errors, maintenance effort can be quite low. So,
better testing quality reduces maintenance effort.
 System Life Span. A system with longer lifespan requires
more maintenance efforts than a system with shorter one.
Many small scale faults in the system can be ignored if the
lifespan of the system is short (a few months for example).
However, even these small shortcomings can cause a lot of
damage for a system in a long run if it has a longer life span
(a few years at least). The system life span can have
significant impact on degree of hardware dependability with
respect to application type.
 Code Quality. Locating faults in an unstructured code or
the code that does not implement the guiding principles of its
architecture, is very difficult. This ultimately affects
software maintenance effort. However, as we are concern
with architecture based software maintenance, so we will
ignore this factor.
 Application Type. Application type represents different
application areas. Each application is characterized by
special attributes as given in their work.
 Interface Complexity: How much complex is interfacing of
the components? If interface complexity is high then the
maintenance cost of Component Based Software will be
high.
 CASE Tools: CASE (Computer Aided Software
Engineering) tools are software programs that are designed
to assist human programmers with the complexity of the
processes and the artifacts of software engineering. CASE
stands for a large number of applications reaching from
simple editing tools to environments supporting the whole
life cycle. Table 1 is shown below:
C. Non-Technical Factors
 Understandability. When programmers try to perform some
maintenance of a system developed by other programmers,
the difficulty of understanding the system limits
maintenance. Therefore, it is important that the maintainer
gains a complete understanding of the structure, behavior
and functionality of the system being maintained.
 Probability. During the lifetime of the system, each scenario
will have certain likelihood of occurrence. Therefore, each
scenario is assigned a probabilistic importance
 Technology Newness: A potential cause to software
maintenance risk is the newness of the technology being
implemented. It is also affected by its volatility, which
implies the frequency with which it keeps changing.
 Organization Maturity: Organization maturity in terms of
its quality certification and/or CMM level defines a
minimum guarantee level for quality of development
process. A highly placed organization is assumed to have
quality skilled staff, defined and repeatable processes along
with procedures for defect prevention and continuous
improvement. This surely reduces the dependability on

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experts, reduced effort requirement for quality software
development.
D.Estimation of ACT (Annual Change Traffic):
In a survey of 63 products in various application areas,
Boehm [B0EHM81] developed a formula for estimating
software maintenance costs. The estimation is calculated in
terms of the Annual Change Traffic (ACT), defined as "The
fraction of a software product's source instructions which
undergo change during a (typical) year, either through addition
or modification". The ACT quantity is used, in conjunction
with the actual or estimated development effort in person
months, to derive the annual effort for software maintenance.
ACT is another parameter that is used to estimate the
maintenance cost. It includes the proportion of original
instruction that undergo a change during a year by addition or
modification, if ACT is given. For estimating the ACT of
future software project we start with the existence of a series of
given characteristics of a software project. The characteristics
must be believed to important influences upon ACT. The
characteristics should be evaluated and revised periodically by
the company’s experts to identify critical characteristics of the
projects covered in the History Table (HT). Based upon the
data in the HT, each characteristic will be assigned a weight pj
which permits us to give appropriate recognition to every
characteristic based upon accumulated ACT data. Each project
will only have two possibilities for every characteristic that is,
to have it or not.
IV. CONCLUSION
Software maintenance cost estimation models helps to
improve the impact of maintenance cost factor. Barry W.
Boehm’s in-depth analysis of 17 factors derived from the
actual use of the software based on the specific situation of the
affected software, the cost of maintenance, the weight factors
and work to make proper adjustments software maintenance
cost estimation closer to the actual value. We propose a
systematic approach for software maintenance cost estimation
model using fourth generation language environment on the
basis of COCOMO II. This model is based on three parameters
which are given. Favorable results can be achieved by using
model implementation. In this paper the problems of
estimating the cost of the maintenance process have been
solved with our model using fourth generation language
environment and data collected from previous projects based
on COCOMO II model. By applying the proposed model and
procedures to these historical data, control over current and
future maintainability can be improved and thereby
unnecessary and unproductive maintenance costs can be
avoided. This model is applicable for providing the accurate
estimates, improving the adaptability of software, developing
and understanding between the user, customer and third party.
As part of the future work, we will improve our cost estimation
model by extending the data pool to cover additional
applications. The software estimation model has to be
recalibrated and extended to more reflect more closely the
software development and maintenance practice. The future
perspective this model can be enhanced to calculate the
maintenance cost of large data projects.
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