  Models for effort and cost estimation are important for distributed software
development as well as for collocated software and system development. Standard
cost models only insufficiently consider the characteristics of distributed
development such as dissimilar abilities at the different sites or significant
overhead due to remote collaboration. Therefore, explicit cost models for
distributed development are needed. In this article, we present the initial
development of a cost overhead model for a Spanish global software development
organization. The model was developed using the CoBRA approach for cost
estimation. As a result, cost drivers for the specific distributed development
context were identified and their impact was quantified on an empirical basis.
The article presents related work, an overview of the approach, and its
application in the industrial context. Finally, we sketch the inclusion of the
model in an approach for systematic task allocation and give an overview of
future work.
