Functional Size Measures and Effort Estimation in Agile Development: A Replicated Study

Author(s):  
Valentina Lenarduzzi ◽  
Ilaria Lunesu ◽  
Martina Matta ◽  
Davide Taibi
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4.12) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Mohit Arora ◽  
Dr. Sahil Verma ◽  
Dr. Kavita

Software Process Models from its inception instill standardization and creates a generic culture of developing software for various IT industries. A great paradigm shift has been observed in terms of embracing Agile Development methodology as a viable development methodology in cross key business units. There is a buffet of agile methodologies comes under the umbrella of ASD, out of which Scrum got the highest popularity and acceptability index.  Agile based software development is the need of immediate environment. There is an increasing demand for significant changes to software systems to meet ever-changing user requirements and specifications. As Agile is volatile, so effort estimation is challenging and still striving for perfection to decide size, effort, cost, duration and schedule of projects with minimum error. This cause sensitizes potential researchers all across the globe to start working on addressing the issue of inaccurate predication of efforts. The gap between estimated and actual effort is because of limited or no inclusion of various estimation factors like people and project related factors, inappropriate use of size metric and cost drivers, ignorance of testing effort, team member’s inability to understand user story size and complexity etc. This paper attempts to bridge the gap of estimated and actual effort by the use of soft computing techniques thus taking the research to advance frontier area in terms of estimation. 


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziema Mushtaq ◽  
Abdul Wahid

Mobile applications affect our everyday activities and have become more and more information centric. Effort estimation for mobile application is an essential factor to consider in the development cycle. Due to feature complexities and size, effort estimation of mobile applications poses a continued challenge for developers. This paper attempts to adapt COSMIC Function Point and Unified Modeling Language (UML) techniques to estimate the size of a given mobile application. The COSMIC concepts capture data movements of the functional processes whereas the UML class analyzes them. We utilize the Use Case Diagrams, sequence diagrams and class diagrams for mapping the Function user requirements for sizing mobile applications. We further present a new size measurement technique; Unadjusted Mobile COSMIC Function points (UMCFP) to get the functional size of mobile application using Mobile Complex Factors as an input. In this study eight mobile applications were analyzed using UMCFP, Function Point Analysis and COSMIC Function Point. The results were compared with the actual size of previous Mobile application projects.


Author(s):  
SECKIN TUNALILAR ◽  
ONUR DEMIRORS

A number of methods have been proposed to build a relationship between effort and size. These models are generally based on regression analysis and a widely accepted model is not yet available. Although in some sizing methods, such as MKII and IFPUG, different multipliers for the base functional components (BFC) exist, their origin and the purpose of their usage are undefined. The COSMIC method does not treat components separately and assigns the same measurement unit to each of them. In this study we used the Artificial Neural Network and regression based methods to create effort estimation models that take the four components of the COSMIC method into consideration. In the research we compared several functional size based effort models in terms of accuracy using a reliable company dataset. These models comprised not only the generic models proposed in the literature or currently in use, but also specific models that we generated using our dataset with a single and multi-variate regression analysis and the ANN method. We also explored the effect of functional similarity (FS) using our specific models. We found that using BFC instead of total size improved effort estimation models and the ANN method is a useful approach to calibrate these components according to the company characteristics.


Author(s):  
Chitrak Vimalbhai Dave

Abstract: Software Process Models from its inception instill standardization and creates a generic culture of developing software for various IT industries. A great paradigm shift has been observed in terms of embracing Agile Development methodology as a viable development methodology in cross key business units. There is a buffet of agile methodologies comes under the umbrella of ASD, out of which Scrum got the highest popularity and acceptability index. Agile based software development is the need of immediate environment. There is an increasing demand for significant changes to software systems to meet ever-changing user requirements and specifications. As Agile is volatile, so effort estimation is challenging and still striving for perfection to decide size, effort, cost, duration and schedule of projects with minimum error. This cause sensitizes potential researchers all across the globe to start working on addressing the issue of inaccurate predication of efforts. The gap between estimated and actual effort is because of limited or no inclusion of various estimation factors like people and project related factors, inappropriate use of size metric and cost drivers, ignorance of testing effort, team member’s inability to understand user story size and complexity etc. This paper attempts to bridge the gap of estimated and actual effort by the use of soft computing techniques thus taking the research to advance frontier area in terms ofestimation. Keywords: Cost Estimation, Effort Estimation, Scrum, Machine Learning, Agile Software Development


Software development becomes a complex process when the software grows in size or complexity making it difficult to estimate usage of resources or development costs. Software effort estimation is that part of development which helps in assessing resource prior to development. An estimate is a quantified evaluation of the effort necessary to carry out a given development task and most often expressed in terms of durations. Effort estimation is done with an intent to aggregate individual estimates and obtain the overall duration, effort or cost of a software project. The workforce is measured as effort and the total time required is defined for a task in effort estimations which is usually expressed in units (Man-day, Man-month, and Man-year). Most other factors like cost or total time required to developed software are dependent on these estimations. Further, Algorithms used for estimating software developments efforts, may also be imprecise. Thus, Effort estimations plays an important part of software development in planning and monitoring projects. Agile methodology is relatively a new set of practices in software development. Agile estimations are based on many factors. Improperly recorded information from Agile methods can result in erratic estimations thus creating an impending need for precise effort estimations. It is difficult to find a single technique which can suit all conditions. Hence, this paper attempts to estimate agile development efforts by using a hybrid technique based on function points and user stories. Results of the proposed technique demonstrate that the arrived effort estimations based on user stories are efficient.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nour elhouda Farih ◽  
Khalid Nafil ◽  
Rochdi El Messousi

Context: Estimating effort has always been considered an important element at the start of each software development project. The challenge of estimating the effort of software development lies in its precision. With the emergence of agile methodologies, methods for effort estimation (EE) had to adapt to this new development path. In this article, we are conducting a systematic mapping study on effort estimation in the context of agile software development. Objective: we want to identify the estimation approaches and techniques used in the context of agile development to better understand the specifics and trends relating to this mode of development. Method: we conducted a systematic mapping study by adopting the guideline explained in[1] [2]. A systematic review of the literature [3] has already been carried out for publications between 2001 and 2013. This work is an extension of this previous study. We queried 5 electronic databases. Conclusion: We retrieved 11350 paper from five electronic databases. A total of 108 papers is selected after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Based on the results, there is a general increase over the years of studies concerning effort estimation in agile software development.


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