An Analysis of the Inclusion of Environmental Cost Factors in Software Cost Estimation Datasets
Emtinan I. Mustafa, Rasha Osman · 2018
Many factors influence the cost estimation of software projects. Environmental factors are country-specific cultural, societal or technical factors that impact software development cost. In this paper, we analyzed the characteristics of 31 cost estimation datasets to identify the incorporation of environmental factors within their cost attributes. To analyze the heterogeneous attributes of the datasets, we combined all attributes within six categories and 48 representative attributes. We observed that the majority of datasets represent organizational environments of Europe and North America. Furthermore, recent datasets provided more diverse attributes and increased coverage of organizational factors (users, developers and project attributes). However, environmental factors, i.e., cultural and societal norms, were not represented. This limits the application of these datasets in environments in which these factors have a high impact on software development cost. This paper highlights the need for further research into cultural and environmental factors and their impact on software cost estimation.