How many maintenance developers needed per 1000 lines of code [closed]

Question

We have a really huge project with 20-30 modules, but it is mostly done. It's in a maintenance stage (mostly bug fixes and rarely new features). I am trying to come up with a number of developers that will be required to maintain the product.

Is there a good way to measure this number?

The project is mostly WinForm-based C# applications (mix of .net 1.1 and 2.0) with a sprinkling of vb6 apps.

Answer 1

This will entirely depend on the code quality, the frequency of changes, and the level of testing.

For instance, a system with thousands of lines of code, but very infrequent changes and a full library of unit/integration tests will probably require fewer developers that a small system that frequently changes and has no testing.

Another important factor is the experience of the developers involved, not only in general, but specifically their understanding of the specific project.

In the end, this is a very hard statistic to estimate, and you are probably best off looking at the workload of the developers that are currently on the project and slowly moving people to or from the project as needed.