scholarly journals Applying COCOMO II for a DO-178C Safety-Critical Software Effort Estimation

Author(s):  
Lucas Pereira dos Santos ◽  
Maurício Ferreira

This paper provides a real example of applying COCOMO II as an estimation technique for the required software development effort in a safety-critical software application project following the DO-178C processes. The main goal and contribution of the case study is to support the research on software effort estimation and to provide software practitioners with useful data based on a real project. We applied the method as it is, by correlating the effort multiplier factors with the complexity and objectives introduced by the DO-178C level A application, resulting in an estimated effort. The rationales for each scale factor and effort multiplier selection were also described in detail. By comparing the estimated values with the actual required data, we found a magnitude of relative error (MRE) of 40% and provided alternatives for future work in order to increase the effort estimation accuracy in safety-critical software projects.

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 7093-7098 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shivakumar Nagarajan ◽  
Balaji Narayanan

Software development effort estimation is the way of predicting the effort to improve software economics. Accurate estimation of effort is the most tedious tasks in software projects. However, several methods are used to estimate the software development effort accurately. Imprecise estimation can leads to project failure due to uncertain data. In this paper, a hybrid model based on combination of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), K-means clustering algorithms, neural network and ABE method is proposed. The proposed method can be useful to predict better clustering and more accurate estimation and hence, there are difficulties in clustering and outliers in the software projects. The obtained results showed the better clustering result which provides the estimation result accurately. Then, neural network and Analogy methods are used which enhance the accuracy significantly.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Fernando Capretz ◽  
Venus Marza

Estimating software development effort is an important task in the management of large software projects. The task is challenging, and it has been receiving the attentions of researchers ever since software was developed for commercial purpose. A number of estimation models exist for effort prediction. However, there is a need for novel models to obtain more accurate estimations. The primary purpose of this study is to propose a precise method of estimation by selecting the most popular models in order to improve accuracy. Consequently, the final results are very precise and reliable when they are applied to a real dataset in a software project. Empirical validation of this approach uses the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) Data Repository Version 10 to demonstrate the improvement in software estimation accuracy.


Author(s):  
FATIMA AZZAHRA AMAZAL ◽  
ALI IDRI ◽  
ALAIN ABRAN

Software effort estimation is one of the most important tasks in software project management. Of several techniques suggested for estimating software development effort, the analogy-based reasoning, or Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), approaches stand out as promising techniques. In this paper, the benefits of using linguistic rather than numerical values in the analogy process for software effort estimation are investigated. The performance, in terms of accuracy and tolerance of imprecision, of two analogy-based software effort estimation models (Classical Analogy and Fuzzy Analogy, which use numerical and linguistic values respectively to describe software projects) is compared. Three research questions related to the performance of these two models are discussed and answered. This study uses the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) dataset and confirms the usefulness of using linguistic instead of numerical values in analogy-based software effort estimation models.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Hassani Saadi ◽  
Vahid Khatibi Bardsiri ◽  
Fahimeh Ziaaddini

One of the major activities in effective and efficient production of software projects is the precise estimation of software development effort. Estimation of the effort in primary steps of software development is one of the most important challenges in managing software projects. Some reasons for these challenges such as: discordant software projects, the complexity of the manufacturing process, special role of human and high level of obscure and unusual features of software projects can be noted. Predicting the necessary efforts to develop software using meta-heuristic optimization algorithms has made significant progressions in this field. These algorithms have the potent to be used in estimation of the effort of the software. The necessity to increase estimation precision urged the authors to survey the efficiency of some meta-heuristic optimization algorithms and their effects on the software projects. To do so, in this paper, they investigated the effect of combining various optimization algorithms such as genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization algorithm and ant colony algorithm on different models such as COCOMO, estimation based on analogy, machine learning methods and standard estimation models. These models have employed various data sets to evaluate the results such as COCOMO, Desharnais, NASA, Kemerer, CF, DPS, ISBSG and Koten & Gary. The results of this survey can be used by researchers as a primary reference.


Author(s):  
Fatih Yücalar ◽  
Deniz Kilinc ◽  
Emin Borandag ◽  
Akin Ozcift

Estimating the development effort of a software project in the early stages of the software life cycle is a significant task. Accurate estimates help project managers to overcome the problems regarding budget and time overruns. This paper proposes a new multiple linear regression analysis based effort estimation method, which has brought a different perspective to the software effort estimation methods and increased the success of software effort estimation processes. The proposed method is compared with standard Use Case Point (UCP) method, which is a well-known method in this area, and simple linear regression based effort estimation method developed by Nassif et al. In order to evaluate and compare the proposed method, the data of 10 software projects developed by four well-established software companies in Turkey were collected and datasets were created. When effort estimations obtained from datasets and actual efforts spent to complete the projects are compared with each other, it has been observed that the proposed method has higher effort estimation accuracy compared to the other methods.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremiah D. Deng ◽  
Martin Purvis ◽  
Maryam Purvis

Software development effort estimation is important for quality management in the software development industry, yet its automation still remains a challenging issue. Applying machine learning algorithms alone often cannot achieve satisfactory results. This paper presents an integrated data mining framework that incorporates domain knowledge into a series of data analysis and modeling processes, including visualization, feature selection, and model validation. An empirical study on the software effort estimation problem using a benchmark dataset shows the necessity and effectiveness of the proposed approach.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brajesh Kumar Singh ◽  
Shailesh Tiwari ◽  
K. K. Mishra ◽  
A. K. Misra

Estimation is an important part of software engineering projects, and the ability to produce accurate effort estimates has an impact on key economic processes, including budgeting and bid proposals and deciding the execution boundaries of the project. Work in this paper explores the interrelationship among different dimensions of software projects, namely, project size, effort, and effort influencing factors. The study aims at providing better effort estimate on the parameters of modified COCOMO along with the detailed use of binary genetic algorithm as a novel optimization algorithm. Significance of 15 cost drivers can be shown by their impact on MMRE of efforts on original 63 NASA datasets. Proposed method is producing tuned values of the cost drivers, which are effective enough to improve the productivity of the projects. Prediction at different levels of MRE for each project reflects the percentage of projects with desired accuracy. Furthermore, this model is validated on two different datasets which represents better estimation accuracy as compared to the COCOMO 81 based NASA 63 and NASA 93 datasets.


Author(s):  
Jeremiah D. Deng ◽  
Martin Purvis ◽  
Maryam Purvis

Software development effort estimation is important for quality management in the software development industry, yet its automation still remains a challenging issue. Applying machine learning algorithms alone often cannot achieve satisfactory results. This paper presents an integrated data mining framework that incorporates domain knowledge into a series of data analysis and modeling processes, including visualization, feature selection, and model validation. An empirical study on the software effort estimation problem using a benchmark dataset shows the necessity and effectiveness of the proposed approach.


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