A Survey on Software Cost Estimation in the Chinese Software Industry

Although a lot of attention has been paid to software cost estimation since 1960, making accurate effort and schedule estimation is still a challenge. To collect evidence and identify potential areas of improvement in software cost estimation, it is important to investigate the estimation accuracy, the estimation method used, and the factors influencing the adoption of estimation methods in current industry. This paper analyzed 112 projects from the Chinese software project benchmarking dataset and conducted questionnaire survey on 116 organizations to investigate the above information. The paper presents the current situations related to software project estimation in China and provides evidence-based suggestions on how to improve software project estimation. Our survey results suggest, e.g., that large projects were more prone to cost and schedule overruns, that most computing managers and professionals were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the project estimation, that very few organizations (15%) used model-based methods, and that the high adoption cost and insignificant benefit after adoption were the main causes for low use of model-based methods.