This paper proposes a new intelligence paradigm scheme to forecast that emphasizes on numerous software development elements based on functional networks forecasting framework. The most common methods for estimating software development efforts that have been proposed in literature are: line of code (LOC)-based constructive cost model (COCOMO), function point (FP) based on neural networks, regr...

This paper looks into productivity of 634 software projects completed between 2009 and 2013 within the IT department of the Dutch tax administration. A predictive neural network based model is developed in order to produce better estimates for future development efforts. Direct cost drivers and numerous organizational changes are identified in order to analyze their impact on productivity. The ...

Cost estimation is a critical issue for software organizations. Good estimates can help us make more informed decisions (controlling and planning software risks), if they are reliable (correct) and valid (stable). In this study, we apply a variable reduction technique (based on auto-associative feed--forward neural networks – called Curvilinear component analysis) to log-linear regression funct...

Software effort estimation requires high accuracy, but accurate estimations are difficult to achieve. Increasingly, data mining is used to improve an organization’s software process quality, e.g. the accuracy of effort estimations .There are a large number of different method combination exists for software effort estimation, selecting the most suitable combination becomes the subject of resear...

This paper proposes a new approach to estimate software costs using case-based reasoning. In this approach, the costs of a new software project are estimated by firstly retrieving the similar previous project and then adapting its costs to the current conditions. The approach focus on the estimation within a narrow context. The project is described as an ontology which allows the managers to es...

The analysis of information from large-scale software development projects has been of considerable use in the formation of theories and models for project management. Of particular relevance is the landmark work of Barry Boehm /1/; extensive use was made of case study data in the development and validation of the COCOMO model for estimation. Other studies worthy of mention include Glass /2/ an...

Software development effort estimation is one of the most major activities in software project management. A number of models have been proposed to construct a relationship between software size and effort; however we still have problems for effort estimation. This is because project data, available in the initial stages of project is often incomplete, inconsistent, uncertain and unclear. The n...

The Software Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) has become a popular Software Process Improvement (SPI) model for enhancing software development processes with the goal of developing high-quality software within budget and schedule. Since Software development effort can be greatly affected by the organizational process maturity level, this study examines the impact of different CMMI-b...

1 There exists an extensive academic literature on software cost estimation that explores techniques such as boot strapping, assorted analogy methods such as nearest neighbor, and even highly non-linear ‘models’ such as decision trees. However, industry “best practice” virtually ignores the academic literature and continues to rely upon standard regression-based algorithms and most often local ...