Cyclomatic Complexity for Determining Product Complexity Level in COCOMO II

Cost Construction Model (COCOMO) is an algorithmic software development cost estimation model, which requires accurate input values for each attribute. Input misjudgment on an attribute will have a great impact on the estimated effort. One of the attributes in COCOMO II is product complexity. Currently, the level of product complexity is assessed subjectively by an expert. This approach tends to be inaccurate because it is influenced by emotions, opinions and experiences. This paper proposes Cyclometer, a new approach based on the cyclomatic complexity metric to measure the product complexity level objectively. A comparison study was carried out and showed that the results comply with the expert judgments as indicated by moderate kappa statistic values.