With a lot of enthusiasm COSMIC and Nesma were looking forward to the SCES ’21 summit on November 09 and 10 in Haarlem the Netherlands. During the last few weeks it became clear that although COVID-restrictions are becoming less of an issue, a lot of organizations still have strict international travel restrictions. Also the uncertainty about the compatibility of COVID passports in the Netherlands and non-EU countries has resulted in an amount of onsite attendees below a threshold that we need to organize a successful event. Successful for you for meeting leaders in the field and the network opportunities with your peers.

Unfortunately we have to postpone the event for November 9 and 10 to a new date in 2022 when travel and access to the summit venue has normalized.

The Software Cost Estimation Challenge will go ahead as an on-line event on November 9.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience but we hope you understand our decision and we will keep you informed about the next steps.

Eric van der Vliet

Frank Vogelezang

Steve Robinson

Harold van Heeringen


Software Cost Estimation

Estimating software development effort is an essential part of getting new or improved software products to its intended end-users. An estimate of cost and effort sets the expectations of the end-users as to when the software will be ready and what it will cost. Multiple sources show that estimating software development cost and effort has a bad track-record, despite over fourty years of research on good software cost estimating practices. The Software Cost Estimation Summit is devoted to promote experiences on good software cost estimation practices. To stimulate the use of good cost estimating practices, the summit is now challenging cost estimation practitioners to show their competence in estimating software development cost.

The challenge is open

Five international teams are now preparing a software cost estimate for a real-life case study. They will present their results on November 9 to an expert panel.

A professional expert panel will decide which team wins the challenge. Deciding criteria will be:

  • The use of standardized methods to translate requirements to cost
  • Methods to prove the reliability of the cost estimate
  • The use of experience data to substantiate the cost estimate
  • A standardized approach to account for incompleteness of the requirements

If you want to see the presentations of the five teams, send an e-mail to challenge@cosmic-sizing.org.

    SCES is a dual-mode summit meeting where leaders in the field of software cost estimation from industry, government and research share their insights and experience in forecasting the cost and other resources needed to complete a software intensive project within a defined scope. Since almost everything developed or constructed today involves a significant software component, software cost estimation is becoming increasingly important.

    The physical part of this summit will take place in the beautiful Philharmonie in Haarlem (the Netherlands), where you can connect physically with the speakers and fellow software cost estimation professionals. Since COVID restrictions limit the number of people that can safely be brought together, most of the summit will be also available online. In this way anyone who is not able to join this summit or does not feel comfortable to travel to the Netherlands can still share in the insights and experiences that will be shared.