Software Cost Estimation (SCE) is a process of predicting the efforts and cost in terms of money, schedule and staff for any software system, Software cost estimation is an old arts come with the beginning of computer industry in 1940s and it has been developed many times until formulating function points by Albrecht in 1979. Nowadays software cost of estimation become a complicated branched science hence many functional sizing techniques, sizing metrics, cost and effort models appeared which probably not exist in this volume in the rest of sciences, this paper shows the common techniques used in SCE in general in addition it highlights the most important trends in this field also it show the urgent topics to be investigated and the challenges in SCE process.

software cost estimation, software cost estimation techniques, software cost estimation issues, software cost estimation challenges