Cost Benefit Study on Ada (trade name).

The purpose of P-1930 is to provide a current view of the costs and benefits that could be expected from the insertion of Ada and Ada-related technologies during the next ten years. The study concentrated on the ten-year technology insertion phase ahead and does not project costs and benefits beyond the ten-year period of 1985-1995. Among the conclusions reached were that 1 the potential benefits from the Ada program initiative are orders of magnitude greated than previous forecasts that ignored the benefits attributable to Ada-related software engineering practices 2 substantial investment in capital expenditures for hardware, software, and training will be required to achieve these improvements in software engineering practices and 3 unless labor-based acquisition is changed to accommodate capitalization in the software industry, it is doubtful that the expectations for savings can be realized. Recommendations include continuing aggressive maintenance of the Ada Language and use of validation and evaluation tools and techniques to ensure that conforming and robust APSEs are available during the first half versus the later half of the Technology Insertion Period i.e., 1985-1995 and initiating DoD effort in support of acquisition and accounting practices that stimulate capital investment for Ada software engineering environments.