Cost estimation in software engineering

The cost of software development is mainly related to the effort of coding and testing. Many methods have been created for estimating software costs for a given software endeavour (new functionality or code maintenance):

Methods

Methods for estimation in software engineering include these principles:

• Analysis effort method
• 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)
• 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

Most cost software development estimation techniques involve estimating or measuring software size first and then applying some knowledge of historical of cost per unit of size. Software size is typically sized in SLOC, Function Point or [Agile story points].

See also

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

External links

• Software Estimation chapter from O'Reilly, Applied Software Project Management
• Estimating With Use Case Points from Methods & Tools
• Definition of Use Case Points method (UCP)
• Roy K. Clemmons, Project Estimation With Use Case Points
• The Dynamics of Software Projects Estimation
• Steve McConnell, Resources on Software Estimation
• Estimating techniques throughout the SDLC
• Top Down, BIM and Parametric Estimating Software
• COCOMO™ II