Software cost estimating-Models and methods

The problem of accurately estimating the cost of software development has been addressed by a number of people over the last 20 years and various models have been developed to assist in the estimating process. However there is no model solution that is easily transferable between user environments. The majority of organisations in the software industry make use of empirical methods which clearly are not satisfactory as there is a continuing trend of project overruns. In this article some modelling methods are briefly discussed and a method outlined that has proved to be useful in a range of estimating situations.