Software cost estimation is a crucial task in software project portfolio decisions like start scheduling, resource allocation, or bidding. A variety of estimation methods have been proposed to support estimators. Especially the analogy-based approach—based on a project’s similarities with past projects—has been reported as both efficient and relatively transparent. However, its performance was ...

Introducing enterprise information systems (EIS) is usually associated with high costs. It is therefore crucial to understand those factors that determine or influence these costs. Though software cost estimation has received considerable attention during the last decades, it is difficult to apply existing approaches to EIS. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of these methods...

A reliable and accurate similarity measurement between two software projects has always been a challenge for analogy-based software cost estimation. Since the effort for a new project is retrieved from similar historical projects, it is essentially to use the appropriate similarity measure that finds those close projects which in turn increases the estimation accuracy. In software engineering l...

Many software cost estimation models suggest a one-size-fit-all effort distribution patterns as the basis of their guidelines for resource allocation on software development activities. This set of distribution percentages is generally developed from experiences with limited data support. In this paper, we will examine a set of real world data points and share our findings that uncover the sign...

Software cost estimation is the process of predicting the effort required to develop a software system. Many estimation models have been proposed over the last 30 years. This paper provides a general overview of software cost estimation methods including the recent advances in the field. As a number of these models rely on a software size estimate as input, we first provide an overview of commo...

Software cost estimation based on multivariate data from completed projects requires the building of efficient models. These models essentially describe relations in the data, either on the basis of correlations between variables or of similarities between the projects. The continuous growth of the amount of data gathered and the need to perform preliminary analysis in order to discover pattern...

Software development has become an important activity for many modern organizations (Pressman, 1997). In fact the quality, cost, and timeliness of developed software are often crucial determinants of an organization’s success. There are significant financial and strategic implications for development projects in terms of activity scheduling and cost estimation. Software cost estimation is one o...

Introducing process-aware information systems (PAIS) in enterprises is usually associated with high costs. It is therefore crucial to understand those factors that determine these costs. Though software cost estimation has received considerable attention during the last decades, it is difficult to apply existing approaches to PAIS. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of these ...

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that significant benefits may be gained from augmenting current approaches to software development effort estimation, and indeed other project management activities, with models developed using fuzzy logic and other soft computing methods. The tasks undertaken by project managers early in a development process would appear to be particularly amenab...

Effective cost estimation is the most challenging activity in software development. Software cost estimation is not an exact science. Cost estimation process involves a series of systematic steps that provide estimate with acceptable risk. Some prevalent LOC based models areBailey Basili model, Alaa F. Sheta G.E. Model, and Alaa F. Sheta, Model 2 [1] .Two new models, based on fuzzy logic sizing...