The Impacts of Process Structure, Communication, and Coordination on Software Project Estimation

1. Software Project Cost Estimation The development and use of effective and efficient methods for estimating the costs of software development remain difficult challenges in software engineering. Many studies have shown wide discrepancies between estimates and actual costs and completion schedules of software development (e.g., [Vijayakumar 19971). Project managers strive to make accurate estimations of cost and effort, but without good software cost estimation tools, the effectiveness of software project management is reduced. There is an urgent need for research on improved methods and tools for software project estimation. COCOMO I1 [Boehm 20001 is used widely for software project estimation throughout the industry and represents the state-of-the-art in estimation methods and tools. In this paper. we present our ideas for extending the COCOMO I 1 framework to include the selection of process structure, staff size, and staff loading on groups in the process structure. Based on the explicit modeling of costs for intra-group communication and inter-group coordination we propose a decision support system (DSS) to support a project manager's decisions on staff size. process structure, and staff loading. A brief case study illustrates use of the DSS. The paper concludes with the status of our research in progress and future directions.