Vendor underestimation of the effort required to deliver a project is probably the most common of all the root causes of troubled projects. Activity-based software project cost estimation is the only approach that is sufficiently 'industrial strength' to be used as a basis for contract. Software sizing professionals are an essential part of a vendor's capability, providing valuable software sizing and estimating support to bid teams. Automated cost estimating tools provide more consistent estimates, more easily, than can be achieved manually. They are very valuable toprovide an early sizing of a software project, to support a detailed activity-based estimate, and to provide a 'sanity check' on manual activity-based estimates. The more effective your software development processes or the higher the level of the Capability Maturity Model your organisation has reached the more competitive you will be in the marketplace and the more accurate your estimates will be. Process improvement programmes to move from Level 1 to Level 3 are costly, but there is a substantial and ongoing return on this investment.

Inspec keywords: software development management; software tools; software cost estimation; project management; Capability Maturity Model; DP industry

Other keywords: software development process; vendor capability; activity-based software project cost estimation; contract pricing; automated cost estimating tool; project planning; process improvement program; software project delivery; software sizing professional; vendor underestimation; capability maturity model; industrial strength; contract negotiation

Subjects: Software engineering techniques