Can the Parr curve help with manpower distribution and resource estimation problems?

This paper analyzes the resource utilization curve devel oped by Parr. The curve is compared with several other curves, including the Rayleigh curve, a parabola, and a trapezoid, with respect to how well they fit manpower uti lization. The evaluation is performed for several projects developed in the Software Engineering Laboratory of the 6–12 man-year variety. The conclusion drawn is that the Parr curve can be made to fit the data better than the other curves. However, because of the noise in the data, it is difficult to confirm the shape of the manpower distri bution from the data alone and therefore difficult to vali date any particular model. Also, since the parameters used in the curve are not easily calculable or estimable from known data, the curve is not effective for resource estimation.