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...

One of the most important aspects of software project management is the estimation of cost and time required for running information system. Therefore, software managers try to carry estimation based on behavior, properties, and project restrictions. Software cost estimation refers to the process of development requirement prediction of software system. Various kinds of effort estimation patter...

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in software resource estimation. We describe common estimation methods and also provide an evaluation framework to systematically compare and assess alternative estimation methods. Though we have tried to be as precise and objective as possible, it is inevitable that such a comparison exercise be somewhat subjective. We howeve...

In this paper we study the effects of a change from the traditional request “How much effort is required to complete X?” to the alternative “How much can be completed in Y workhours?”. Studies 1 and 2 report that software professionals receiving the alternative format provided much lower, and presumably more optimistic, effort estimates of the same software development work than those receiving...

Context: Software development effort estimates are often inaccurate, and this inaccuracy cause problems for the clients as well as the providers. Consequently, we need more knowledge about the estimation processes, so that we can improve them. Objective: This study investigates how initial judgment-based estimation of work effort in software development affects subsequent, unrelated estimation ...