This paper summarizes estimation knowledge through a review of surveys on software effort estimation. Main findings were that: (1) Most projects (60-80%) encounter effort and/or schedule overruns. The overruns, however, seem to be lower than the overruns reported by some consultancy companies. For example, Standish Group’s ‘Chaos Report’ describes an average cost overrun of 89%, which is much h...

Software estimation accuracy is among the greatest challenges for software developers. Software development effort estimation is one of the most major activities in software project management. A number of models have been proposed to make software effort estimations but still no single model can predict the effort accurately. The need for accurate effort estimation in software industry is stil...

Effort estimation is a key factor for software project success, defined as delivering software of agreed quality and functionality within schedule and budget. Traditionally, effort estimation has been used for planning and tracking project resources. Effort estimation methods founded on those goals typically focus on providing exact estimates and usually do not support objectives that have rece...