Over the past 40 years limited progress has been made to help practitioners estimate the risk and the required effort necessary to deliver software solutions. Recent developments improve this outlook, one in particular, the research of Juan Carlos Nogueira. Dr. Nogueira developed a formal model for risk assessment that can be used to estimate a software projectαs risk when examined against a desired development time-line. Dr. Nogueira developed his model based on data collected from a series of experiments conducted on the ViteÌ Project simulation. This unique approach provides a starting point towards a proven formal model for risk assessment. Another issue with software development, especially in the Department of Defense (DoD), is dealing with aging legacy software systems. These systems perform the functionality of their design, but their interfaces are obsolete and changing requirements limit their functional usefulness. This thesis is an exercise in upgrading a legacy system licensed to the DoD, ViteÌ Project, for use with ongoing DoD research that seeks to discern truly quantifiable criteria that can be used to more accurately estimate the length of time needed to complete any software project. Accurately projecting software development times and accurate software development costs have eluded software developers for decades. / US Navy (USN) author

Thesis (M.S in Computer Science) Naval Postgtaduate School, December 2001. / Thesis Advisor(s): Berzins, Valdis ; Murrah, Michael. "December 2001." Includes bibliographical references (p. 91). Also available online.