A Case Study of Effort Estimation in Agile Software Development Using Use Case Points

1111 A CASE STUDY OF EFFORT ESTIMATION IN AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT USING USE CASE POINTS Zhamri Che Ani (Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Malaysia [email protected]) Shuib Basri (Universiti TeknologiPetronas, Tronoh, Malaysia [email protected]) ABSTRACT:Research on effort estimation in software development has been conducted for decades and has produced quantities of models and tools. Unfortunately, reliable initial estimates are quite difficult to obtain because of the lack of detailed information at an early stage of the development. To overcome this problem, use case points (UCP) is seen as one of the proven methods used by many software practitioners to estimate effort required to develop software applications. However, this method can be difficult to use in some cases, particularly in Agile software development where the Product Backlog does not satisfy a number of conditions in use case documentation. Therefore, this paper looks at the potential of successful application of the UCP method for estimating the effort of Agile software development projects, including the major limitations and offers some possible recommendation on how to make simpler estimation in early stage of the software development. The results indicate that although the effort required produced by UCP method has little differences compared to the actual estimate, but the results still can be accepted due to small percentage of gap.