Software Cost Estimation Benchmarking And Risk Assessment The Software Decisionmakers Guide To Predictable Software Development

Software effort estimation is a key element of software project planning and management. Yet, in industrial practice, the important role of effort estimation is often underestimated and/or misunderstood.In this book, Adam Trendowicz presents the CoBRA method (an abbreviation for Cost Estimation, Benchmarking, and Risk Assessment) for estimating the effort required to successfully complete a software development project, which uniquely combines human judgment and measurement data in order to systematically create a custom-specific effort estimation model. CoBRA goes far beyond simply predicting the development effort; it supports project decision-makers in negotiating the project scope, managing project risks, benchmarking productivity, and directing improvement activities. To illustrate the method’s practical use, the book reports several real-world cases where CoBRA was applied in various industrial contexts. These cases represent different estimation contexts in terms of software project environment, estimation objectives, and estimation constraints.This book is the result of a successful collaboration between the process management division of Fraunhofer IESE and many software c