ABSTRACT

Working out a software budget in the IT world is always a challenging task—it has been so ever since the early days of the mainframe. This is all the more so today, when we are faced with new technologies on a daily basis. It would be just great if these technologies would carry on their labels such data as performance, productivity, and cost per hour, and if, when plugged in, we could rest assured of the accuracy and reliability of the data. However, we know it is not that way. It is when we need to estimate the cost of a software item that problems start. One most common problem is that the label of the technology to 152build it unfortunately fails to provide information on the data required for that estimate. On the other hand, even when information is provided, it might not be reliable.