Software Migration Project Cost Estimation using COCOMO II and Enterprise Architecture Modeling

Large amounts of software are running on what is considered to be legacy platforms. These systems are often business critical and cannot be phased out without a proper replacement. Migration of these legacy applications can be troublesome due to poor documentation and a changing workforce. Estimating the cost of such projects is nontrivial. Expert estimation is the most common method, but the method is heavily relying on the experience, knowledge, and intuition of the estimator. The use of a complementary estimation method can increase the accuracy of the assessment. This paper presents a metamodel that combines enterprise architecture modeling concepts with the COCOMO II estimation model. Our study proposes a method combining expert estimation with the metamodel-based approach to increase the estimation accuracy. The combination was tested with four project samples at a large Nordic manufacturing company, which resulted in a mean magnitude of relative error of 10%.