A Complexity Based Satellite Subsystem Cost and Time Estimating Parametric Model

The Italian Space Agency (ASI) recently decided to put together a satellite subsystem development phase Cost and Time estimating Parametric Model. The model is based on the Complexity Index theory developed by David Bearden applied at subsystem level to a number of ASI satellite programs. For each subsystem technical data as well as cost and schedule data related to the development phases (phase C/D) was collected. The complexity index for each subsystem was then obtained and IRLS (Iteratively Re-weighted Least Squares) regressions were applied to obtain functions that linked the complexity to cost and separately, to development time. The obtained functions were packaged in Excel using visual basic. When using the model to obtain an estimate, the continuous input technical attributes can be specified as distributions in order to generate complexity index distributions and therefore, cost and development time estimate distributions