A New Hybrid for Software Cost Estimation Using Particle Swarm Optimization and Differential Evolution Algorithms

Software Cost Estimation (SCE) is considered one of the most important sections in software engineering that results in capabilities and well-deserved influence on the processes of cost and effort. Two factors of cost and effort in software projects determine the success and failure of projects. The project that will be completed in a certain time and manpower is a successful one and will have good profit to project managers. In most of the SCE techniques, algorithmic models such as COCOMO algorithm models have been used. COCOMO model is not capable of estimating the close approximations to the actual cost, because it runs in the form of linear. So, the models should be adapted that simultaneously with the number of Lines of Code (LOC) has the ability to estimate in a fair and accurate fashion for effort factors. Metaheuristic algorithms can be a good model for SCE due to the ability of local and global search. In this paper, we have used the hybrid of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Differential Evolution (DE) for the SCE. Test results on NASA60 software dataset show that the rate of Mean Magnitude of Relative Error (MMRE) error on hybrid model, in comparison with COCOMO model is reduced to about 9.55%.