Cost estimation in software engineering

The cost of software is mainly from developer time, but can also be from training, managing and buying extra equipment, servers and software.

History

The first software was written on punch cards, so estimating cost required guessing the amount of punchcards needed.

Methods

Methods for estimation in software engineering include these principles:

• COCOMO, the first version known as COCOMO 81 and the second as COCOMO™ II
• COSYSMO
• Evidence-based Scheduling Refinement of typical agile estimating techniques using minimal measurement and total time accounting.
• Function Point Analysis
• Parametric Estimating
• The Planning Game (from Extreme Programming)
• ITK method, also known as Method CETIN
• Proxy-based estimating (PROBE) (from the Personal Software Process)
• Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
• Price to win
• Putnam model, also known as SLIM
• PRICE Systems Founders of Commercial Parametric models that estimates the scope, cost, effort and schedule for software projects.
• SEER-SEM Parametric Estimation of Effort, Schedule, Cost, Risk. Minimum time and staffing concepts based on Brooks's law
• The Use Case Points method (UCP)
• Weighted Micro Function Points (WMFP)
• Wideband Delphi

See also

• Software development effort estimation
• Software metric
• Project management
• Cost overrun
• Risk
• Comparison of development estimation software

External links

• Software Estimation chapter from Applied Software Project Management (O'Reilly)
• Article Estimating With Use Case Points from Methods & Tools
• The Dynamics of Software Projects Estimation
• Resources on Software Estimation from Steve McConnell
• Article Estimating techniques throughout the SDLC
• Top Down, BIM and Parametric Estimating Software
• Definition of Use Case Points method (UCP)
• [COCOMO™ II http://cost.jsc.nasa.gov/COCOMO.html]
• [1] Project Estimation With Use Case Points by Roy Clemmons