A study on the estimation of software development cost of IT projects in public sector

As the portion of information systems (IS) budget to the total government budget becomes greater, the cost estimation of IS development and maintenance projects is recognized as one of the most important problems to be resolved for scientific and efficient management of IS budget. Since IS budget makes much effect on the delivery time, quality and productivity of IS projects, the exact cost estimation is also necessary for the successful accomplishment of IS projects. The primary concern in the cost estimation of IS projects is software cost estimation, which requires the measurement of the size of software. There are two methods for sizing software: line-of-code approach, function point model. In this paper, we propose a function-point-based model for estimating software cost. The proposed model is derived by collecting about fifty domestic IT projects in public sector and analyzing their relationship between cost drivers and development effort. Since the proposed model is developed by simplifying the function point model that can be used only when detailed user requirements are specified, it can be also applied at project planning and budgeting phase.