Globalization is adding more dimensions to software effort estimation process. The notions of leadership and culture carry with them highly variable assumptions, and thus, must be explicitly modeled. A new model that incorporates leadership and culture is proposed, elaborated and validated. A survey was undertaken to determine the impact of culture and its effect on the software development pro...

Parametric software effort estimation models consisting on a single mathematical relationship suffer from poor adjustment and predictive characteristics in cases in which the historical database considered contains data coming from projects of a heterogeneous nature. The segmentation of the input domain according to clusters obtained from the database of historical projects serves as a tool for...

Change effort estimation (CEE) is the process of predicting the work and the hours needed when there is a software change request. Software changes that are not correctly addressed, not complete and not consistent with other artefacts will introduce delay to the project and exceed the original budget. Requirement changes during software development phase are delicate to handle due to the fact t...

The research work is an extension of the original UCP Model for software estimation by incorporating the factors that are currently weighted in estimation of software by IT professionals. The rationale of the study is to make UCP Model effective, realistic and more accurate for the current IT industry. To identify the gap between the original UCP model and the current estimation considerations,...

Software Cost Estimation can be described as the process of predicting the most realistic effort required to complete a software project. Due to the strong relationship of accurate effort estimations with many crucial project management activities, the research community has been focused on the development and application of a vast variety of methods and models trying to improve the estimation ...

Software effort estimation is a critical part of software engineering. Although many techniques and algorithmic models have been developed and implemented by practitioners, accurate software effort prediction is still a challenging endeavor. In order to address this issue, a novel soft computing framework was previously developed. Our study utilizes this novel framework to develop an approach c...

Software projects often do not meet their scheduling and budgeting targets. Inaccurate estimates are often responsible for this mismatch. This study investigates extant research on factors that affect accuracy of software development effort estimation. The purpose is to synthesize existing knowledge, propose directions for future research, and improve estimation accuracy in practice. A systemat...

This paper exemplifies how better knowledge about human judgement strategies known as heuristics can be used to improve software processes, especially estimation and prediction processes. Human judgement heuristics work well when they exploit a fit between their structure and the structure of the environment in which they are used. This use of environmental fit may lead to amazingly good judgem...

Software cost estimation is known to be a challenging task at best, and these challenges are increased for programmers operating outside the support of an established team programming environment. While many software cost estimation models exist with varying levels of support, the nature of metrics collected for these models is seldom applicable to the solitary programmer. In addition, the work...

A cornerstone of software project management is effort estimation, the process by which effort is forecasted and used as basis to predict costs and allocate resources effectively, so enabling projects to be delivered on time and within budget. Effort estimation is a very complex domain where the relationship between factors is non-deterministic and has an inherently uncertain nature, and where ...