An unadjusted size measurement of embedded software system families and its validation

Embedded software systems have become the driving force in many areas of technology, like the automotive industry. Functions for the control of cars, driver assistance as well as systems for information and entertainment are accomplished by software driven control units. Owing to the high complexity and development effort of embedded systems, these resources have to be reused. Software system families (SSF) are a promising solution to achieve cost reduction by reusing common software assets in different variants of an automobile. To support the economic management of this developmental approach, we need software metrics to estimate the effort of building embedded software system families. Techniques of size measurement and cost estimation for software system families are highly insufficient, in general, and do not exist for the automotive domain. Therefore, this article describes a conglomeration of innovative metrics to measure the size of a system family oriented software development. These size metrics analyze a real-time and a process focused perspective of embedded software system families in the automotive domain. A combination of both viewpoints describes the unadjusted size of software driven control units to indicate and estimate their development costs. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.