21.8 Additional Resources

Boehm, Barry W. Software Engineering Economics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981. Although this edition has been largely superseded by Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II (below), this edition contains interesting, detailed reference tables for effort and schedule breakdowns across activities.

Boehm, Barry, et al. Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Appendix A of Boehm's book describes effort and schedule breakdowns for waterfall projects, MBASE projects, and Rational Unified Process projects. Table A.10 (which is actually six tables) provides detailed breakdowns of effort and schedule across different activities.

Cohn, Mike. Agile Estimating and Planning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR, 2006. Chapter 5 of Cohn's book contains a nice description of the differences between ideal effort and planned effort.

DeMarco, Tom and Timothy Lister. Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects, New York, NY: Dorset House, 2003. This book presents a readable introduction to software risk management.

Fenton, Norman E. and Shari Lawrence Pfleeger. Software Metrics: A Rigorous and Practical Approach. Boston, MA: PWS Publishing Company, 1997. Chapter 10 contains a detailed discussion of estimating software reliability. If you don't like equations with symbols like α, β, Ψ, φ, λ, ∏, ∑, Γ, and ∫, this is not the book for you because all these symbols show up in this chapter.

Jones, Capers. Estimating Software Costs. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998. Chapter 14 of Jones's book contains a detailed discussion and examples of how cost buildups can vary between different kinds of organizations. Chapter 21 explains how unpaid overtime affects cost estimates.

Jones, Capers. Software Assessments, Benchmarks, and Best Practices. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Jones's book provides some data that is updated or expanded from the data he presents in Estimating Software Costs.

Putnam, Lawrence H. and Ware Myers. Measures for Excellence: Reliable Software On Time, Within Budget. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Yourdon Press, 1992. Putnam and Myers provide numerous useful rules of thumb for planning. The overall context of the book is a detailed, mathematical explanation of Putnam's estimation model.

Stutzke, Richard D. Estimating Software-Intensive Systems. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley, 2005. Chapter 12 describes approaches to effort allocation that are based on Cocomo 81 and Cocomo II. Chapters 15 and 23 focus on detailed cost estimation issues. Cost estimation and other cost-related issues are a major focus of Stutzke's book, and various cost-related tips are sprinkled throughout. Sections 12.1 and 12.2 discuss the relationships between effort, duration, and staff availability.

Tockey, Steve. Return on Software. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2005. Chapter 15 of Tockey's book contains a good discussion of determining unit cost, including methods of allocating overhead by using different costing methods and hazards associated with some of the methods.

Tip #103

Planning and estimation are related, and planning is a much bigger topic than can be addressed in one chapter in a book that focuses on software estimation. Read the literature on planning.