Literature Survey on Non-Algorithmic Methods for Software Development Cost Estimation

Software cost estimators have expressed concern over their inability to estimate accurate costs associated with software development. Considerable studies carried out to evaluating and selecting better software cost estimation methods and tools for specific software development projects. There are many software cost estimation methods, which can be classified into two types’ algorithmic methods and non-algorithmic methods.

This paper gives an overview of non-algorithmic cost estimation methods and then discusses their advantages and disadvantages. No one method is necessarily good or worse than the other, in fact, their strengths and weaknesses are often complimentary to each other. The guidelines for selecting appropriate cost estimation methods are also included. It also focuses on some of the relevant reasons that cause inaccurate estimation.