Abstract
The recent advancements in information and communication technology (ICT) have inspired all the operational domains of both public and private sector enterprise to endorse this technology. Software development plays a crucial role in supporting ICT. Software effort estimation serves as a critical factor in software application development, and it helps application development teams to complete the development process on time and within budget. Many developmental approaches have been used for software effort estimation, but most of them were conventional software methods and therefore failed to produce accurate results when it came to web or mobile effort estimation. This chapter explains different types of software applications, software estimation models, the importance of software effort estimation, and challenges faced in software effort estimation.
TopTypes Of Software Applications
Software-based applications are broadly categorized into three types: traditional or conventional software applications, web-based applications, and mobile based application. All these application variants do share certain similarities, but holistically are different from one another in their nature, scope, and dimensionality. The brief description of these types in mentioned as under.
Figure 1. Different types of software applications
Key Terms in this Chapter
Effort Estimation Models: Different models that practitioners use to perform effort estimation for different software developments.
Effort Estimation: Process of calculating the budget required to develop a software application.
Software Development: Systematic approach followed in development industry to develop software products
Web Application: Type of software application developed to be accessed via web browser and meant to address the requirements or diverse people with non-geographical access restriction.
Software Application: Conventional or traditional software application developed to deliver a specific kind of functionality meant to be used within the boundary of a particular organization.
Estimated Effort: The approximate prediction of efforts projected by estimator to perform application development on time and within the budget.
Mobile Application: Similar to that of web application in certain parameters developed to run on handheld devices with understandable interface.
Actual Effort: The actual extent of resources that are utilized to perform successful software development.