Metrics for design projects: a review

Abstract Design projects have been plagued by severe schedule and cost overruns. This problem persists in spite of the significant advances that have been made in design technology over the last two decades. Underestimation of design effort and thus project duration has been identified as one of the major reasons for the problem. Adopting a metrics approach to estimate design effort and duration is one promising way of overcoming this difficulty. This paper reviews the problem and the literature on metrics for engineering design. The limitations of these metrics are identified, and the main factors for the estimation of design effort are indicated along with key parameters.

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