Estimating the effort of software development is fraught with difficulties, and it is clear that effort should be invested in improving the accuracy and the reliability (consistency) of effort estimates, as well as the assessment of estimate uncertainty. However, it is less clear where to target such improvement efforts. We discuss the degree to which it is feasible to improve the expertise of ...

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 invol...

The best elucidations to software development problems are regularly touted as object-oriented processes. The popularity of object-oriented design metrics is essential in software engineering for measuring the software complexity, estimating size, quality and project efforts. There are various approaches through which we can find the software cost estimation and predicates on various kinds of d...

This paper addresses the issue of Software Cost Estimation (SCE) providing an alternative approach to modelling and prediction using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Input Sensitivity Analysis (ISA). The overall aim is to identify and investigate the effect of the leading factors in SCE, through ISA. The factors identified decisively influence software effort in the models examined and thei...

The paper gives an overview of the state o f the art o f software cost estimation (SCE). The main questions to be answered in the paper are: (I) What are the reasons for overruns o f budgets and planned durations? (2) What are the prerequisites for estimating? (3) How can software development effort be estimated? (4) What can software project management expect from SCE models, how accurate are ...

Development effort is an undeniable part of the project management which considerably influences the success of project. Inaccurate and unreliable estimation of effort can easily lead to the failure of project. Due to the special specifications, accurate estimation of effort in the software projects is a vital management activity that must be carefully done to avoid from the unforeseen results....

A new approach to perform feasibility studies using business process models is proposed. The utilization of the improved Role Activity Diagram notations has led to the extraction of the number of candidate use cases in software systems which naturally led to software cost estimation much before the availability of detailed system requirements. This enables project managers to perform their what...

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...

OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE DOCUMENTS a tendency toward cost and effort overruns in software projects. On average, this overrun seems to be around 30 percent.1 Furthermore, comparing the estimation accuracy of the 1980s with that reported in more recent surveys suggests that the estimation accuracy hasn’t changed much since then. (The only analyses that suggest a strong improvement in estimation accu...

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...