The validation of a political model of information systems development cost estimating
SIGCPR '91 Proceedings of the 1991 conference on SIGCPR
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IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Causes of inaccurate software development cost estimates
Journal of Systems and Software
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Journal of Systems and Software
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IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
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IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Anchoring and adjustment in software estimation
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A framework for the analysis of software cost estimation accuracy
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A Systematic Review of Software Development Cost Estimation Studies
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
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ASWEC '07 Proceedings of the 2007 Australian Software Engineering Conference
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Information and Software Technology
Any other cost estimation inhibitors?
Proceedings of the Second ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement
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Information and Software Technology
IEEE Software
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Information and Software Technology
Exploring the human and organizational aspects of software cost estimation
Proceedings of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering
Journal of Systems and Software
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Cost estimation of software projects is an important activity that continues to be a source of problems for practitioners despite improvement efforts. Most of the research on estimation has focused on methodological issues while the research focused on human factors primarily has targeted cognitive biases or perceived inhibitors. This paper focuses on the complex organizational context of estimation and investigates whether estimates may be distorted, i.e. intentionally changed for reasons beyond legitimate changes due to changing prerequisites such as requirements or scope. An exploratory study was conducted with 15 interviewees at six large companies that develop software-intensive products. The interviewees represent five stakeholder roles in estimation, with a majority being project or line managers. Document analysis was used to complement the interviews and provided additional context. The results show that both estimate increase and estimate decrease exist and that some of these changes can be explained as intentional distortions. The direction of the distortion depends on the context and the stakeholders involved. The paper underlines that it is critical to consider also human and organizational factors when addressing estimation problems and that intentional estimate distortions should be given more and direct attention.