A Review of Surveys on Software Effort Estimation

  • Authors:

  • Kjetil Molkken;Magne Jrgensen

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • ISESE '03 Proceedings of the 2003 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

This paper summarizes estimation knowledge througha review of surveys on software effort estimation. Mainfindings were that: (1) Most projects (60-80%) encountereffort and/or schedule overruns. The overruns, however,seem to be lower than the overruns reported by someconsultancy companies. For example, Standish Group's'Chaos Report' describes an average cost overrun of89%, which is much higher than the average overrunsfound in other surveys, i.e., 30-40%. (2) The estimationmethods in most frequent use are expert judgment-based.A possible reason for the frequent use of expert judgmentis that there is no evidence that formal estimation modelslead to more accurate estimates. (3) There is a lack ofsurveys including extensive analyses of the reasons foreffort and schedule overruns.