Performance of Cost Assessment on Reusable Components for Software Development using Genetic Programming

Reusability is the quality of a piece of software, which enables it to be used again, be it partial, modified or complete. A wide range of modeling techniques have been proposed and applied for software quality predictions. Complexity and size metrics have been used to predict the number of defects in software components. Estimation of cost is important, during the process of software development. There are two main types of cost estimation approaches: algorithmic methods and non-algorithmic methods. In this work, using genetic programming which is a branch of evolutionary algorithms, a new algorithmic method is presented for software development cost estimation, using the implementation of this method; new formulas were obtained for software development cost estimation in which reusability of components is given priority. After evaluation of these formulas, the mean and standard deviation of the magnitude of relative error is better than related algorithmic methods such as COCOMO formulas.