Accurate estimation of software development effort is critical in software engineering. Underestimates lead to time pressures that may compromise full functional development and thorough testing of software. In the existing systems, the effort and cost estimation are more concentrated only on the development of software systems alone and not on the quality coverage. Hence the quality assurance for the effort estimation is proposed in this paper. To assure this quality, the ISO 9126 quality factors are used. For weighing the factors, the function point metric is used as an estimation approach. The classification of software system for which the effort estimation is to be calculated based on the COCOMO model classes. An exhaustive literature survey reveals that attention is not paid to the following for estimating the effort: 1. Function point, 2. COCOMO classes of systems, and 3. ISO9126 quality factors. Thus by combining all the three parts, a new effort estimation method is developed as a research approach.

COCOMO systems, effort estimation, function points, software quality