Cost Estimation of Post Production Software Support in Ground Combat Systems

Weapon systems and programs are becoming increasingly more dependent on software as a critical technology for the success of the programs. Along with this dependence on performance, the costs associated with software are becoming an increasing share of the life cycle costs of these weapon systems and programs. Life cycle software costs are divided into two phases, development and maintenance. There are numerous popular models to aid developers and independent estimators in predicting costs and schedules for software development. Some of these models are open source, many others are proprietary. These models are based on research performed on existing software systems and historical data. However, for software maintenance, there are far fewer models, research efforts, or collected data sets. The Army s term for software maintenance is post production software support. This thesis describes how this support is currently funded, performed, and estimated. The model presented could be adopted to manage support of Army ground combat systems. This thesis is furthers the understanding of the software maintenance support costs associated with weapon systems. In addition to specific results on ground combat systems presented, the thesis provides insight into maintaining other large software-dependent systems and recommendations on further research in the field. The original document contains color images.