An Empirical Study to Investigate Software Estimation Trend in Organizations Targeting CMMI^SM

This paper discusses software estimation practices existing in industry and literature, its strengths and weaknesses. Main focus is the gap analysis of organization with respect to CMMI level 3 for SE/SW/IPPD/SS. Data collection reveals that company makes use of heuristic approaches in which expert judgment supplemented with wideband Delphi, was mainly used for software estimation. In the light of CMMI level 3 for SE/SW, it was suggested that formal methods for estimating size, effort and cost for the project should be implemented apart from heuristics used for estimation. Different estimation methodologies are applicable in different categories of projects. None of them gives 100% accuracy but proper use of them makes estimation process smoother. Future work is calibration of parametric software estimation approaches for the organization under study by making use of organizational process database to plan, estimate and tailor project variables that best suits organization´s processes and procedures