Comparative Analysis of Different Software Cost Estimation Methods?

The importance of software cost estimation has been increasing gradually over last three decades. Software cost estimation is related to how long and how many people are required to complete a software project. Software cost estimation is the process of predicting the effort and cost required to develop a software system. The basic input for the software cost estimation is coding size and set of cost drivers, the output is Effort in terms of Person-Months (PM’s) and cost. One of the problems in software cost estimation is how we can evaluate the cost estimation model. A key factor in selecting a cost estimation model is the accuracy of its estimates. Unfortunately, despite the large body of experience with estimation models, the accuracy of these models is not satisfactory. This paper provides a detail overview of existing software cost estimation models and techniques. This paper present the advantage and disadvantage of various cost estimation method. We also focus the importance of accurate cost estimation. Here, cost estimation tool Costar is used for estimation.