State of the practice of effort estimation in business environments

Discussions with software developers from a number of business organisations were targeted at the effect of estimation practices on the success or failure of some of the software development projects with which they had been involved. Several important estimation topics were also covered in a questionnaire. Our results show that for only one-third of the projects were the project managers involved in making the initial estimates. We also investigated which of the software effort estimation practices have a significant impact on project success and failure. While many factors impinge on project success and failure, our research shows that so far as the effort estimation process is concerned, the most important of these factors are goodness of the initial effort estimates and the effect of adding staff late to meet an aggressive schedule.