State of the Practice in Software Effort Estimation: A Survey and Literature Review
This is an incremental survey that identifies mismatches between current estimation methods and industry needs for software project planning.
The study surveyed industrial objectives, organizational capabilities, and applied practices in software effort estimation, comparing identified requirements against existing methods to address gaps in supporting modern objectives like causal analysis.
Effort estimation is a key factor for software project success, defined as delivering software of agreed quality and functionality within schedule and budget. Traditionally, effort estimation has been used for planning and tracking project resources. Effort estimation methods founded on those goals typically focus on providing exact estimates and usually do not support objectives that have recently become important within the software industry, such as systematic and reliable analysis of causal effort dependencies. This article presents the results of a study of software effort estimation from an industrial perspective. The study surveys industrial objectives, the abilities of software organizations to apply certain estimation methods, and actually applied practices of software effort estimation. Finally, requirements for effort estimation methods identified in the survey are compared against existing estimation methods.