This paper summarizes the current state of the art and recent trends in software engineering economics. It provides an overview of economic analysis techniques and their applicability to software engineering and management. It surveys the field of software cost estimation, including the major estimation techniques available, the state of the art in algorithmic cost models, and the outstanding research issues in software cost estimation.

Software engineering economics

The purpose of the author is to correlate actual data with COCOMO (constructive cost model) estimated values and determine if the COCOMO method accurately reflects documented program expenditures. Because spaceborne microprocessing is a relatively new arena, the primary constraint associated with developing a model is the limited available database. Data collection to support a statistical analysis is presented along with a discussion of calculated COCOMO results. In the analysis, the use of nonparametric statistics for small samples is addressed. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank and Kendall-Rank statistics support distribution free analyses of the data. >

The viability of using COCOMO in the special application software bidding and estimating process

Effective software cost estimation is one of the most challenging and important activities in software development. The software industry does not estimate projects well. Poor estimation leads to poor project planning with resulting schedule overruns, inadequate staffing, low system quality, and many aborted projects. Research on software estimation is needed to build more accurate models of the key aspects of software development. The goals of research in this dissertation are to investigate and improve the modeling of team size and project structures in current software estimation methods. 
Mathematical models for estimating the impacts of project team size and three variations of project structure are developed. These models accept the outputs of the COCOMO II software estimation tool, allow variation in both team size and project structure, and produce more detailed project estimates. This new extended model of COCOMO II is implemented in a decision support tool for software estimators called PSEstimate. 
Following the design science research paradigm, the artifact is evaluated with an experiment with experienced software project managers. Three treatment groups: a manual (no tool) group, a COCOMO II group, and a PSEstimate group, completed two multipart software cost estimation tasks. The accuracy and consistency of the cost and schedule estimates, the participants' confidence in their estimates, and their satisfaction with and perceived usefulness of the cost estimation tool are measured. 
The experimental results support most of the hypotheses of the dissertation. For most tasks, individuals aided by computer-based decision support tools produce more accurate project effort estimates and are more confident in their estimates than manual estimators. There are no significant differences between the three groups on schedule estimation. A possible explanation is that experienced estimators in the manual group compensate for the inaccuracy of their effort estimates by adding time to their schedule estimates. 
The research contributions are new mathematical models for software estimation based on project team size and structure; a decision support tool (PSEstimate) that incorporates these models; and the experimental results that demonstrate improvements in software estimation by experienced project managers when the new models and tool are applied in practice.

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The impacts of the handoffs on software development: a cost estimation model

Offshore Software Development Outsourcing (OSDO) is increasingly becoming the normal practice in the software industry. It offers a bundle of core benefits for client organizations which includes: high quality, fast and cost effective development of software products . However, OSDO possesses substantial risks and limitations during project management.To handle such problems Portfolio Cost Management (PCM) is used one of the best appro aches. It is a set of centralized management of processes, methods and technologies used between client and vendor to reduce software costs and improve quality. We have performed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) by applying customized search strings ob tained from our research questions, along with the other SLR steps such as protocol development, initial publication selection, final publication selection, publication quality assessment, data extraction process and data synthesis. In this research, we explore 16 success factors of PCM to analyze the association between a client and vendor. It includes:'efficient cost estimation strategies', 'efficient project management', 'efficient knowledge sharing management', 'efficient software effort estimation', 'planning realistic goals', and nine others. Furthermore, we analyze these factors based on different types oforganizations, i.e. research and non-research. For best results in the software industry, it is proposed for vendor organizations to address the factors: 'efficient cost estimation strategies', 'efficient project management', 'efficient knowledge sharing management', 'efficient software effort estimation' and 'planning realistic goals'.

Critical success factors forportfolio cost managementin offshore software development outsourcing relationshipfrom vendors perspective: analysis based on organization type using systematic literature review

Functional requirements for the development and use of a software-cost database

This paper describes the existing NLR hierarchic computer network, especially the communication aspects of the datatransmission between computers of the various levels. From the user and network requirements a "most desirable" set of rules for communications is derived. The existing communication procedures are compared with the most desirable set of rules. The major part of the discrepancies, originated by this comparison, can be solved by the implementation of a programmable front-end processor.

/pdf/aspects-of-the-communication-within-a-multisuppliers-4f4broicmf.pdf

F. J. van den Bosch

Papers

Functional requirements for the development and use of a software-cost database

Aspects of the Communication within a Multisuppliers Computer Network