A proposed framework for predicting the development effort of multimedia courseware

Multimedia is increasingly popular in education and training for the delivery of courseware. Unfortunately the costs of developing multimedia courseware is very high. Even with limited use of video, audio and animation, development to delivery times in excess of 800:1 have been reported by various authors. The paper discusses a framework proposal for the development of a metrics based model for predicting the development effort for multimedia systems. It examines the waterfall multimedia courseware development model as the basis for large project developments and proposes a composite multimedia effort development model which makes use of a Rayleigh curve and cost drivers. The Average Number of Training hours is used as the basis for the effort estimate. The proposed cost drivers act on the Average Number of Training hours to tailor it to the type of multimedia project being developed. Initial analysis of cost drivers and delivery time are described. Finally the future development of such a framework is discussed.

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