At the present day, business state is dynamic as well as complex. The entire organization, especially management comes across multiple issues while managing the software projects like changing requirements, escalation in new services/demands, tight budget plans and fast turnaround demands. On the other hand, organizations are trying to perform outstanding with fewer resources and finance. Hence it is essential to gauge every aspect of business especially software project management. This paper introduces techniques for estimating software cost and effort required for software development, launch, and maintenance. Software projects are critically known for going past their deadlines, crossing budget limits or both. The problem resides in estimating the number of efforts required for the development of a project. Software cost estimation is the process of predicting the effort, time required for developing a software system. The cost estimation is also depending on the size of a project which may be a line of code or function-point. There are various techniques for performing software cost estimation including algorithmic or non-algorithmic models. Each model has its own advantages and margins. The thought of paper accomplishes on the range of software cost estimation models and their performance with respect to effective software project management practices.