Re: How to identify a website's scale?

Philipp wrote:
Did he mean the total cost of the project or a cost per time?

If he meant total cost, this quote really makes no sense to me.

"Cost" might have been a bit misleading - the principle is expressed as "effort":

However, monetary cost is roughly directly proportional to effort, and effort is a form of cost, so that is where my use of the term "cost" originated.

<http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/frames.asp?uri=1996/08/letters.asp>
Putnam's SLIM has been in use since 1978 with an exceptionally good record for accuracy (consistent with the quality of input provided).
- William J. Sweet
Quantitative Software Management, Inc.

....
Lawrence H. Putnam based his Software Lifecycle Model (SLIM) on the Norden-Rayleigh curve plus empirical results from 50 U.S. Army projects. Putnam's data indicates that the development staffing rises smoothly during the project and then drops sharply during acceptance testing. Putnam models this shape using the first part of the Norden-Rayleigh curve and uses this fact to relate the area under the curve (which corresponds to the development effort) to the curve's parameters. Putnam's other empirical results are expressed as two equations describing relations between the development effort and the schedule. The first equation, called the "software equation," states that development effort is proportional to the cube of the size and inversely proportional to the fourth power of the development time. Solving these two coupled equations gives the basic predictive equations used in the commercial SLIM® tool. (SLIM is a registered trademark of Quantitative Software Management, Inc.).
....
Since its original release 15 years ago, SLIM has continually improved and now reflects data from over 4,000 completed projects representing a wide range of applications types. Many SLIM users report great success in estimating cost and schedule for software projects.

- Richard D. Stutzke
Science Applications International Corp.

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Lew
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