Cocomo Phase Distribution

COCOMO provides a set of tables for distributing the effort and schedule to the phases of development (system engineering, preliminary design, critical design, etc.) and activities (system analysis, coding, test planning, etc.) as a percentage of the total. The phase distribution consists of three phases: Product Design (PD) Phase, Programming Phase, and Integration and Test (I&T) Phase.

The Product Design Phase consists of hardware-software architecture determination, product specification, review, and update. The PD phase also encompasses program design and database design. This phase includes requirements for verification and validation (V&V), product design, models, prototypes, risk analysis, tool acquisition, contracts, personnel planning, standards, and draft high-level end-user documentation.

The Programming Phase consists of detail design, code and unit tests. It also includes integration planning, detail test plan, test tool acquisition, complete draft user documentation, high-level code for V&V, and design change V&V.

The Integration and Test Phase consists of the integration of individual computer program components and product test. It also includes final changes, change V&V, and acceptance test.

For more details, see Software Engineering Economics, Tables 4-1, 4.2, and 4.3, pp. 46-50.

The following phase distribution of Effort and Schedule for the Organic, Semidetached, and Embedded modes was obtained from the Software Engineering Economics, Table 6-8, pp. 90

Phase Distribution of Effort and Schedule (All Modes)
Effort Distribution		Size
Mode	Phase	Small 2 KDSI	Intermediate 8 KDSI	Medium 32 KDSI	Large 128 KDSI	Very Large 512 KDSI
Organic	Product design (%)	16	16	16	16
	Programming (%)	68	65	62	59
	Detailed design (%)	26	25	24	23
	Code and unit test (%)	42	40	38	36
	Integration and test (%)	16	19	22	25
Semidetached	Product design (%)	17	17	17	17	17
	Programming (%)	64	61	58	55	52
	Detailed design (%)	27	26	25	24	23
	Code and unit test (%)	37	35	33	31	29
	Integration and test (%)	19	22	25	28	31
Embedded	Product design (%)	18	18	18	18	18
	Programming (%)	60	57	54	51	48
	Detailed design (%)	28	27	26	25	24
	Code and unit test (%)	32	30	28	26	24
	Integration and test (%)	22	25	28	31	34
Schedule Distribution		2 KDSI	8 KDSI	32 KDSI	128 KDSI	512 KDSI
Organic	Product design (%)	19	19	19	19
	Programming (%)	63	59	55	51
	Integration and test (%)	18	22	26	30
Semidetached	Product design (%)	24	25	26	27	28
	Programming (%)	56	52	48	44	40
	Integration and test (%)	20	23	26	29	32
Embedded	Product design (%)	30	32	34	36	38
	Programming (%)	48	44	40	36	32
	Integration and test (%)	22	24	26	28	30

For the SLOC sizes that fall between the lower and upper bound, linear interpolation is performed to obtain the percentages. For SLOC sizes below the lower bound, the percentages listed under the lower bound column are used. For SLOC sizes above the upper bound, the percentages listed under the upper bound column are used.