While the average software organization can struggle with project costs that run double their original estimates, some more sophisticated organizations achieve results with estimation errors as low as 5-10%. To overcome this problem, Software Estimation focuses on the art of software estimation and provides a set of procedures that have been proven and heuristics that software developers, technical leads and project managers can apply to their projects. Instead of secret treatises and rigid modeling techniques, award-winning author Steve McConnell gives practical guidance to help organizations achieve basic estimation skills and lay the groundwork to continue improving project cost estimates.