Estimating Packaged Software

Book excerpt: In software intensive organizations there is a trend towards less custom made software and an increasing use of packaged software. There is no generic framework for estimating the effort and cost of implementation and maintenance of packaged software. Each vendor and implementation partner uses its own proprietary techniques for estimation. This makes it hard to compare estimates from different sources or to build up benchmark data for public reference. Because of the many questions and discussions within the Nesma community about estimating implementation and maintenance of packaged software Nesma created an estimating framework that is presented in this guide. This document consists of three parts: Part 1: Packaged Software – Estimation ModelPart 2: Packaged Software – Cost DriversAppendices with practical examples to apply the Estimation Model