用于软件开发工作量估算的IOP模型

软件开发工作量估算可以为多项与组织决策和项目管理相关的任务提供有效的支持.根据工作量估算的不同目标,通过对COCOMO Ⅱ成本驱动因子进行扩充和对国内外最新软件项目数据进行回归分析,建立了一个用于工作量估算的IOP模型.该模型采用统一框架,分别从行业水平、组织水平和项目特征3个层次实现基于规模的软件开发工作量估算,以满足针对软件行业、软件组织和特定软件项目的不同的估算目标,例如项目招标、软件组织不同项目的管理和具体软件项目的管理等.最后,给出了IOP模型应用的若干实例.     

基于决策树的软件项目估算方法

软件工程领域的一个重要问题是预测软件开发项目的规模、工作量和成本,即软件项目估算问题。基于机器学习的方法在软件项目估算领域具有优势地位,本文提出了基于决策树的聚类分析预测方法,通过对目标项目的目标属性进行正确分类,预测目标属性的取值范围。通过对502个ISBSG v9项目数据集中的项目进行基于C4.5算法的分类预测,正确率达到82.4701%,满足了软件项目估算的指标要求。     

一种基于WebMO模型的迭代式软件估算方法

改进了基于WebMO模型的软件规模和工作量估算方法，通过调整项目的计数规范、修正基于Web的规模预测因子、增加软件配置模块等途径，对实际的Web项目进行了迭代式估算。应用结果表明，改进方法在对Web软件项目的估算可靠性方面有了一定的提高。     

软件成本估算研究

软件成本估算是对将要开发的或正在开发的软件项目所需要的工作量和工作进度作出预测,从而产生出一组在可接受误差范围内的近似规划。该文着重论述了软件成本估算的内容,以及软件成本估算的方法。     

RUP估算过程模型

软件行业估算追踪记录显示软件项目的失败率仍很高,估算问题是基本的原因之一.估算方法的创新没有出现期望的突破,而通过可控的过程,可以获得期望的结果.提出了一个过程模型,用于指导软件项目展开一系列估算相关的活动.该过程模型包括两部分,一是RUP估算过程,其详细描述了RUP开发模型里每个开发管理阶段应如何进行估算;二是用贝叶斯网络对RUP估算过程模型建立图形化推理模型,它能有效地用于估算分析、交流、权衡以及风险预测等.RUP估算过程解决了估算活动的定义问题,但不便于形成清晰的估算视图.软件估算的特点很适合用贝叶斯网络进行建模.贝叶斯工作量估算模型是RUP估算过程模型的抽象;ESFQ模型详细建模了软件项目关键因素之间的权衡关系.案例分析证明了该过程模型的适用性.     

协同过率在工作量估算中的应用

工作量估算是软件项目管理的重要内容之一,协同过滤是一种在历史数据中确定相似用户或物品产生推荐的方法,已成功的应用于电子商务、影视推荐等多个领域,本文将协同过滤技术应用于软件工作量的估算。首先对历史项目集中的数值型数据进行归一化,然后采用均值对缺失值进行插补,余弦用于计算项目的相似度,最后确定项目的近邻集对待评估项目的工作量进行估算。从USP05-FT中选择了4个项目作为实例来说明该估算过程,估算结果与实际值有一些偏差是由于协同过滤仅能处理数值型数据。     

基于遗传算法和案例推理的软件费用估算方法

为了提高类比法的估算精度,减少人工检索案例的工作量和难度,提出了一种基于遗传算法和案例推理的软件费用估算方法。给出了案例推理过程的估算步骤,构造了案例的相似性度量函数;设计了用于案例推理问题的遗传算法,利用该算法在历史数据库中搜索与目标案例最相似的项目,并对软件项目的特征权重进行优化;借助Albrecht和Desharnais数据库,对提出的方法进行分析。实验结果表明,该方法可以在软件生命周期的早期显著提高软件费用的估算精度,与类比估算和线性回归方法相比,具有更小的平均误差率,其估算性能符合相关行业软件的估算需求。     

一种面向ERP外包项目的开发成本估算方法

对于软件项目而言,项目成本的有效控制是每个项目取得成功的标志之一。恰当的软件开发成本估算方法将大大提高成本估算的稳定性和可靠性,从而提高项目经理对项目成本的有效控制。本文在深入分析目前业界常用的软件项目开发成本估算方法的基础上,针对ERP外包软件项目开发生命周期的特点,提出了以ERP程序单元为最小单位的一种项目开发成本估算法,即FRICE估算法。该估算方法已经在大量ERP外包软件项目中得到了成功应用、实践和验证,它能有效地帮助项目经理对项目开发成本进行估算、控制和管理。     

跨组织数据的软件成本估算方法

软件成本估算一直是软件项目管理的重要部分。经过半个多世纪的研究和工业实践,成本估算方法、模型得到了极大的丰富。这些方法、模型也衍生出了各种成本估算工具。但是,成本估算方法和模型的基础是历史项目数据。没有历史项目数据的公司和组织只能利用其他公司或组织的数据来进行自己项目的成本估算。如何利用跨组织数据进行有效的成本估算成为更具现实意义的问题。针对这一问题,提出了一种有效利用跨组织数据进行成本估算的方法,并通过实验说明了方法的有效性。     

一种基于WebMO模型的迭代式软件估算方法

改进了基于WebMO模型的软件规模和工作量估算方法,通过调整项目的计数规范、修正基于Web的规模预测因子、增加软件配置模块等途径,对实际的Web项目进行了迭代式估算.应用结果表明,改进方法在对Web软件项目的估算可靠性方面有了一定的提高.     

Enhancing the Cocomo estimation models

In software engineering, team task assignments appear to have a significant potential impact on a project's overall success. The authors propose task assignment effort adjustment factors that can help tune existing estimation models. They show significant improvements in the predictive abilities of both Cocomo I and II by enhancing them with these factors     

Contrasting ideal and realistic conditions as a means to improve judgment-based software development effort estimation

Context

The effort estimates of software development work are on average too low. A possible reason for this tendency is that software developers, perhaps unconsciously, assume ideal conditions when they estimate the most likely use of effort. In this article, we propose and evaluate a two-step estimation process that may induce more awareness of the difference between idealistic and realistic conditions and as a consequence more realistic effort estimates. The proposed process differs from traditional judgment-based estimation processes in that it starts with an effort estimation that assumes ideal conditions before the most likely use of effort is estimated.

Objective

The objective of the paper is to examine the potential of the proposed method to induce more realism in the judgment-based estimates of work effort.

Method

Three experiments with software professionals as participants were completed. In all three experiments there was one group of participants which followed the proposed and another group which followed the traditional estimation process. In one of the experiments there was an additional group which started with a probabilistically defined estimate of minimum effort before estimating the most likely effort.

Results

We found, in all three experiments, that estimation of most likely effort seems to assume rather idealistic assumptions and that the use of the proposed process seems to yield more realistic effort estimates. In contrast, starting with an estimate of the minimum effort, rather than an estimate based on ideal conditions, did not have the same positive effect on the subsequent estimate of the most likely effort.

Conclusion

The empirical results from our studies together with similar results from other domains suggest that the proposed estimation process is promising for the improvement of the realism of software development effort estimates.     

An Empirical Study of Analogy-based Software Effort Estimation

Conventional approaches to software cost estimation have focused on algorithmic cost models, where an estimate of effort is calculated from one or more numerical inputs via a mathematical model. Analogy-based estimation has recently emerged as a promising approach, with comparable accuracy to algorithmic methods in some studies, and it is potentially easier to understand and apply. The current study compares several methods of analogy-based software effort estimation with each other and also with a simple linear regression model. The results show that people are better than tools at selecting analogues for the data set used in this study. Estimates based on their selections, with a linear size adjustment to the analogue's effort value, proved more accurate than estimates based on analogues selected by tools, and also more accurate than estimates based on the simple regression model.     

An Artificial Neural Network-Based Model for Effective Software Development Effort Estimation

In project management, effective cost estimation is one of the most crucial activities to efficiently manage resources by predicting the required cost to fulfill a given task. However, finding the best estimation results in software development is challenging. Thus, accurate estimation of software development efforts is always a concern for many companies. In this paper, we proposed a novel software development effort estimation model based both on constructive cost model II (COCOMO II) and the artificial neural network (ANN). An artificial neural network enhances the COCOMO model, and the value of the baseline effort constant A is calibrated to use it in the proposed model equation. Three state-of-the-art publicly available datasets are used for experiments. The backpropagation feedforward procedure used a training set by iteratively processing and training a neural network. The proposed model is tested on the test set. The estimated effort is compared with the actual effort value. Experimental results show that the effort estimated by the proposed model is very close to the real effort, thus enhanced the reliability and improving the software effort estimation accuracy.     

Estimating Maintenance Effort by Analogy

Effort estimation is a key step of any software project. This paper presents a method to estimate project effort using an improved version of analogy. Unlike estimation methods based on case-based reasoning, our method makes use of two nearest neighbors of the target project for estimation. An additional refinement based on the relative location of the target project is then applied to generate the effort estimate. We first identify the relationships between cost drivers and project effort, and then determine the number of past project data that should be used in the estimation to provide the best result. Our method is then applied to a set of maintenance projects. Based on a comparison of the estimation results from our estimation method and those of other estimation methods, we conclude that our method can provide more accurate results.     

Software effort estimation accuracy prediction of machine learning techniques: A systematic performance evaluation

Software effort estimation accuracy is a key factor in effective planning, controlling, and delivering a successful software project within budget and schedule. The overestimation and underestimation both are the key challenges for future software development, henceforth there is a continuous need for accuracy in software effort estimation. The researchers and practitioners are striving to identify which machine learning estimation technique gives more accurate results based on evaluation measures, datasets and other relevant attributes. The authors of related research are generally not aware of previously published results of machine learning effort estimation techniques. The main aim of this study is to assist the researchers to know which machine learning technique yields the promising effort estimation accuracy prediction in software development. In this article, the performance of the machine learning ensemble and solo techniques are investigated on publicly and non-publicly domain datasets based on the two most commonly used accuracy evaluation metrics. We used the systematic literature review methodology proposed by Kitchenham and Charters. This includes searching for the most relevant papers, applying quality assessment (QA) criteria, extracting data, and drawing results. We have evaluated a state-of-the-art accuracy performance of 35 selected studies (17 ensemble, 18 solo) using mean magnitude of relative error and PRED (25) as a set of reliable accuracy metrics for performance evaluation of accuracy among two techniques to report the research questions stated in this study. We found that machine learning techniques are the most frequently implemented in the construction of ensemble effort estimation (EEE) techniques. The results of this study revealed that the EEE techniques usually yield a promising estimation accuracy than the solo techniques.     

Impact of effort estimates on software project work

This paper presents results from two case studies and two experiments on how effort estimates impact software project work. The studies indicate that a meaningful interpretation of effort estimation accuracy requires knowledge about the size and nature of the impact of the effort estimates on the software work. For example, we found that projects with high priority on costs and incomplete requirements specifications were prone to adjust the work to fit the estimate when the estimates were too optimistic, while too optimistic estimates led to effort overruns for projects with high priority on quality and well specified requirements.

Two hypotheses were derived from the case studies and tested experimentally. The experiments indicate that: (1) effort estimates can be strongly impacted by anchor values, e.g. early indications on the required effort. This impact is present even when the estimators are told that the anchor values are irrelevant as estimation information; (2) too optimistic effort estimates lead to less use of effort and more errors compared with more realistic effort estimates on programming tasks.     

Experiences in Improving Flight Software Development Processes

In 2001, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) initiated a software process improvement effort. In 2004, JPL began the Multimission System Architecture Platform (MSAP) project and designated it as part of this effort. In 2007, JPL's Engineering and Science Directorate, which controls the MSAP project's technical development, achieved CMMI Staged Maturity Level 3.1 This article describes the impacts of the CMMI rating and the JPL process improvement effort on the MSAP project's software engineering and assurance organizations.     

Nonlinear Bayesian Estimation: From Kalman Filtering to a Broader Horizon

This article presents an up-to-date tutorial review of nonlinear Bayesian estimation. State estimation for nonlinear systems has been a challenge encountered in a wide range of engineering fields, attracting decades of research effort. To date, one of the most promising and popular approaches is to view and address the problem from a Bayesian probabilistic perspective, which enables estimation of the unknown state variables by tracking their probabilistic distribution or statistics (e.g., mean and covariance) conditioned on a system's measurement data. This article offers a systematic introduction to the Bayesian state estimation framework and reviews various Kalman filtering (KF) techniques, progressively from the standard KF for linear systems to extended KF, unscented KF and ensemble KF for nonlinear systems. It also overviews other prominent or emerging Bayesian estimation methods including Gaussian filtering, Gaussian-sum filtering, particle filtering and moving horizon estimation and extends the discussion of state estimation to more complicated problems such as simultaneous state and parameter/input estimation.      

AREION: Software effort estimation based on multiple regressions with adaptive recursive data partitioning

ContextAlong with expert judgment, analogy-based estimation, and algorithmic methods (such as Function point analysis and COCOMO), Least Squares Regression (LSR) has been one of the most commonly studied software effort estimation methods. However, an effort estimation model using LSR, a single LSR model, is highly affected by the data distribution. Specifically, if the data set is scattered and the data do not sit closely on the single LSR model line (do not closely map to a linear structure) then the model usually shows poor performance. In order to overcome this drawback of the LSR model, a data partitioning-based approach can be considered as one of the solutions to alleviate the effect of data distribution. Even though clustering-based approaches have been introduced, they still have potential problems to provide accurate and stable effort estimates.ObjectiveIn this paper, we propose a new data partitioning-based approach to achieve more accurate and stable effort estimates via LSR. This approach also provides an effort prediction interval that is useful to describe the uncertainty of the estimates.MethodEmpirical experiments are performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach by comparing with the basic LSR approach and clustering-based approaches, based on industrial data sets (two subsets of the ISBSG (Release 9) data set and one industrial data set collected from a banking institution).ResultsThe experimental results show that the proposed approach not only improves the accuracy of effort estimation more significantly than that of other approaches, but it also achieves robust and stable results according to the degree of data partitioning.ConclusionCompared with the other considered approaches, the proposed approach shows a superior performance by alleviating the effect of data distribution that is a major practical issue in software effort estimation.