Identifying Factors Affecting Software Development Cost

Software systems of today are often complex, making development costs difficult to estimate. This paper uses data from 50 projects performed at one of the largest banks in Sweden to identify factors that have an impact on software development cost. Correlation analysis of the relationship between factor states and project costs were assessed using ANOVA and regression analysis. Ten out of the original 32 factors turned out to have an impact on software development project cost at the Swedish bank, including the number of function points and involved risk. Some of the factors found to have an impact on cost are already included in estimation models such as COCOMO II and SEER-SEM, for instance function points and software platform. Thus, this paper validates these well-known factors for cost estimation. However, several of the factors found in this study are not included in established models for software development cost estimation. Thus, this paper also provides indications for possible extensions of these models.QC 20120316