Software Cost Estimation Approaches: A Survey

Abstract

The software cost estimation aims to predict the most realistic effort that is required to finish a software project and so it is critical to the success of a software project management. A Software Cost Estimation affects nearly all management activities, including project bidding, resource allocation and project planning. It is affected by a number of factors, such as implementation efficiency, as well as how much the various reviews and studies completed prior to the software development stage cost. Accurate cost estimation will help us to complete the project on time and within budget. Accurate estimation is important because it has led to extensive research into the methods of software cost estimation. Some important software cost estimation methods have been studied in this research work. In addition, we have set out own criteria, which has been used to compare all the different selected methods. We have also given a score for each evaluation criteria, so that we can compare the different methods numerically for cost estimation. Our observations have shown that it is best to use a number of different estimating techniques or cost models, and then compare the results before determining the reasons for any of the large variations. None of the methods are necessarily better or worse than the others. We found, in fact, that their strengths and weaknesses often complement each other. Therefore, the main conclusion is that there is no one single technique that is best for every situation, and the results of a number of different approaches need to be carefully considered to discover what is the most likely to produce estimates that are realistic.

Software Cost Estimation by Optimizing COCOMO Model Using Hybrid BATGSA Algorithm

“…The comparison of the hybrid BATGSA algorithm is done with the COCOMO based cost estimation i.e. cost estimation without optimization [3] with the BAT [7] and improved BAT based optimization [11]. The remaining section of the paper uses Dataset1 for the cocomo81 dataset, Dataset2 for NASA dataset having 60 projects, Dataset3 for NASA dataset with 93 project and Dataset 4 for kemerer dataset.…”

“…The cost estimation is required to compute the budget and the resources required for the project [1,2]. The cost of the project depends upon the efforts done which include the number of reviews, efficiency during implementation and pre-development processing, etc [3]. The Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) is a model to determine the cost of the software.…”

An Improved Bat Algorithm for Software Cost Estimation

“…It is an important factor for the customer and developer both. If the cost of selected features is known initially at design phase it will provide a great importance to gain customer satisfaction [1]. Software Cost estimation is not only estimate the money spent in project.…”

Cost Implications for a Discrete Mathematics Intelligent Tutoring System

“…The three variants of COCOMOM II models are then characterized into three different modes of development based on the complexity of the project (Lane, 2006).The three different modes of development or software products are organic, semi-detached and embedded listed in increasing order of complexity. For each mode of development COCOMO II there are defined model parameter constants: a, b, c, and d which are influencing factors of development for each category of software product as given by Boehm in 1981 as cited in (Keshta, 2017).…”

“…The effort (E); labor required to complete different tasks of development and is measured in person-months. a is a productivity coefficient and b is a scale factor coefficient (Keshta, 2017).…”