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...

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...

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 discuss estimation of efforts needed to update programs according to a given requirement change. In the Object-Oriented prototyping development(shortly the OO prototyping), the requirement changes occur frequently and regularly. Thus a simple and fast estimation of efforts is strongly required by both developers and managers. However, existing estimation methods cannot be appli...

This paper outlines a four step effort estimation study and focuses on the first and second step. The four steps are formulated to successively introduce a more formal effort experience base. The objective of the study is to evaluate the needed formalism to improve effort estimation and to study different approaches to record and reuse experiences from effort planning in software projects. In t...

In this paper we propose and estimate a dynamic structural model of fixed capital investment at the firm level. Our dataset consists of an unbalanced panel of Spanish manufacturing firms. Two important features are present in this dataset. There are periods in which firms decide not to invest and periods of large investment episodes. These empirical evidence of infrequent and lumpy investment p...

This paper examines when information asymmetry among investors affects the cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors. When equity markets are perfectly competitive, information asymmetry has no separate effect on the cost of capital. When markets are imperfect, information asymmetry can have a separate effect on firms’ cost of capital. Consistent with our prediction, we find that infor...

*Correspondence: Gürkan Sin, Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Building 229, Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] Capital investment, next to the product demand, sales, and production costs, is one of the key metrics commonly used for project evaluation and feasibility assessment. Estimating the investment costs of a new product/proces...

In this paper we propose and estimate a dynamic structural model of ...xed capital investment at the ...rm level. Our dataset consists on an unbalanced panel of Spanish manufacturing ...rms. Two important features are present in this dataset. There are periods in which ...rms decide not to invest and periods of large investment episodes. These empirical evidence of infrequent and lumpy investme...