A Component-Based Approach to Effort Estimation

Over the past ten couple of years, there is a variety of effort models proposed by academicians and practitioners at early stage of software development life cycle. Some authors addressed that efforts could be predicted using lines of codes (LOC) or COCOMO model, while others emphasized that it could be made using function point analysis (FPA) and others. The study seeks to develop a model which estimates software effort by studying and analyzing small and medium scale application software. To develop such a model, 50 completed software projects are collected from a software company. From the sample, components affecting effort estimation are identified and extracted. By applying them to simple regression analyses, a prediction of software effort estimates with accuracy of MMRE = 9% was constructed. The results give several benefits. First, estimation problems are minimized due to the simple procedure used in identifying those components. Second, the predicted software projects are only applicable to a specific environment rather than being based upon industry environment. We believe the accuracy of effort estimates can be improved. According to the results analyzed, the work shows that it is possible to build up simple and useful prediction model based on data extracted at early stage of software development life cycle. We hope this model can provide valuable ideas and suggestions to project designers for planning and controlling software projects in near future.