A General Empirical Solution to the Macro Software Sizing and Estimating Problem
Lawrence H. Putnam · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · 1978
Application software development has been an area of organizational effort that has not been amenable to the normal managerial and cost controls. Instances of actual costs of several times the initial budgeted cost, and a time to initial operational capability sometimes twice as long as planned are more often the case than not.