Analysis of attributes relating to custom software price

Price of custom software is very important for a user (end user company). However, there is very little information which helps the user judge the validity of the custom software price. So, one of our research goals is building price estimation model and showing its accuracy for the user to judge the validity of the custom software price. The other goal is how to get value for money custom software. In the analysis, we used 31 projects collected from Japanese organizations. First, we analyzed relationships of unit price of effort, unit price of FP (function point), and productivity. The analysis result showed productivity is more important variable than unit price of effort for the custom software price estimation. Next, relationships of other variables were analyzed to identify important variables for the price estimation. The result suggested some variables such as system architecture are important for that. At the end, the price was estimated based on FP and effort. In the analysis, when the price was estimated based on FP, the median balanced relative error (BRE) was 86.6%, and when it was estimated based on effort, median BRE was 20.2%.