A preliminary checklist for software cost management

Abstract

This paper presents a process framework and a preliminary checklist for software cost management. While most textbooks and research papers on cost estimation look mainly at the "estimation" phase, our framework and checklist includes the phases relevant to estimation: "preparation", "estimation", "application", and "learning". We believe that cost estimation processes and checklists should support these phases to enable high estimation accuracy. The checklist we suggest is based on checklists from a number of sources, e.g., a handbook in forecasting and checklists present in several Norwegian software companies, it needs, however, to be extended through feedback from other researchers and software practitioners. There is also a need for a provision of conditions for meaningful use of the checklist issues and descriptions of the strength and sources of evidence in favor of the checklist issues. The present version of the checklist should therefore be seen as preliminary and we want to get feedback from the conference participants and other readers of this paper for further improvements.