Software cost overruns and time delay are common occurrences in the software development process. To reduce the occurrences of these problems, software cost estimation models and software complexity metrics measurements are two popular approaches used by the industry.
Most of the related studies are conducted for large scale software projects. In this thesis, we have investigated the effectiveness of three popular cost estimation models and program complexity metrics in so far as their applicability to small scale projects is concerned.
Experiments conducted on the programs collected from FIU and NCR corporation indicate that none of the cost estimation models precisely estimates the actual development effort. However, the regression results indicate that the actual development effort is some function of the model variables. In addition, it also showed that the complexity metrics are useful measurements in predicting the actual development effort. Additional results related to lines of code metric are also discussed.
