Best practices in cost estimation for IT project / Zarirah Zamakhsari

The role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Malaysia has become more vital with the Malaysian Government exhilarating the pace for various sectors of the industry to embrace ICT. In addressing priority usage of ICT in Malaysia and as the spending on ICT is increasing, it shows that IT practitioner in Malaysia will involve a lot of cost estimation practice for IT project in organization. Cost estimation is one of the most challenging tasks in project management. As far as this research is concerned, there are no researches done on best practice in cost estimation in developing country especially in Malaysia. The purpose of this research is to identify the factors that influenced best practices in cost estimation for IT project in organization. Besides, this research study was1 aimed to investigate the tool or technique used in cost estimation as well as to develop the cost estimation best practices model for IT project. The scope of this research was to focus on IT practitioner from both Public and Private Sectors at Klang Valley area. This research used primary and secondary sources and the data have been gathered through questionnaire and interview. There are nine factors of best practice cost estimation that have been identified in this research which will be explained further in next chapters. The hypothesis was done and the researcher has found out that the respondent excluded the risk factor and experience as the factor which influences best practice cost estimation. Furthermore, this research investigated cost estimation techniques or tools used in cost estimation. The IT practitioners did not have specific cost estimation techniques or tools and the use of tools or techniques have been summarized. Based on the research analysis, this research proposed a cost estimation best practice model as a guidance to do cost estimation for IT project. Thus, it is important to have a platform that can provides a good starting point in providing the best practices in cost estimation for IT project in Malaysia.