Towards an early software estimation using log-linear regression and a multilayer perceptron model

Abstract

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues.Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. a b s t r a c tSoftware estimation is a tedious and daunting task in project management and software development. Software estimators are notorious in predicting software effort and they have been struggling in the past decades to provide new models to enhance software estimation. The most critical and crucial part of software estimation is when estimation is required in the early stages of the software life cycle where the problem to be solved has not yet been completely revealed. This paper presents a novel log-linear regression model based on the use case point model (UCP) to calculate the software effort based on use case diagrams. A fuzzy logic approach is used to calibrate the productivity factor in the regression model. Moreover, a multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network model was developed to predict software effort based on the software size and team productivity. Experiments show that the proposed approach outperforms the original UCP model. Furthermore, a comparison between the MLP and log-linear regression models was conducted based on the size of the projects. Results demonstrate that the MLP model can surpass the regression model when small projects are used, but the log-linear regression model gives better results when estimating larger projects.

Organizational Strategies and Social Interaction Influence in Software Development Effort Estimation

“…Use of own historical data is consequently crucial if one cannot be sure that the estimation model's core relationships are based on similar project contexts [72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88].…”

Factores que Afectan la Precisión de la Estimación del Esfuerzo en Proyectos de Software Usando Puntos de Caso de Uso

“…En base a los resultados obtenidos en la Tabla 3, se ha podido identificar que la mayoría de los autores hacen referencia a continuar con la afinación del método de Puntos de Casos de Uso haciendo uso de más proyectos y utilizando casos de uso con mayor cantidad de transacciones dentro de sus investigaciones (Kashyap, Shukla & Misra, 2014) (Nunes, 2010) (Alves, Valente & Nunes, 2013) (Ayyıldız, Koçyiğit & Peker, 2013) ) (Nassif, Ho & Capretz, 2013). Otros trabajos futuros restantes como una estandarización de casos de uso (Remón & Thomas, 2010), calibración de los pesos de casos de uso (Nassif, Ho & Capretz, 2013), consideración de diversos factores de complejidad (Azzeh, 2013) y actualización de los factores ambientales y técnicos (Nassif, Ho & Capretz, 2013); ya han sido evidenciados como materia de estudio por diversos autores en la presente investigación.…”

“…Otros trabajos futuros restantes como una estandarización de casos de uso (Remón & Thomas, 2010), calibración de los pesos de casos de uso (Nassif, Ho & Capretz, 2013), consideración de diversos factores de complejidad (Azzeh, 2013) y actualización de los factores ambientales y técnicos (Nassif, Ho & Capretz, 2013); ya han sido evidenciados como materia de estudio por diversos autores en la presente investigación. …”

“…Towards an early software estimation using log-linear regression and a multilayer perceptron model (Nassif, Ho & Capretz, 2013) A36 UML Based Object Oriented Software Development Effort Estimation Using ANN (Singh & Sahoo, 2012) …”

A CASE Study on Software Project Development Cost, Schedule & Effort Estimation

“…Table 3 provides a select list of tools that are popular in the software estimation community. Each tool has been designed with a specific estimation method and a specific output as an objective [14][15][16].…”