Software effort estimation using machine learning technique

Software engineering effort estimation plays a significant role in managing project cost, quality, and time and creating software. Researchers have been paying close attention to software estimation during the past few decades, and a great amount of work has been done utilizing a variety of machinelearning techniques and algorithms. In order to better effectively evaluate predictions, this study recommends various machine learning algorithms for estimating, including k-nearest neighbor regression, support vector regression, and decision trees. These methods are now used by the software development industry for software estimating with the goal of overcoming the limitations of parametric and conventional estimation techniques and advancing projects. Our dataset, which was created by a software company called Edusoft Consulted LTD, was used to assess the effectiveness of the established method. The three commonly used performance evaluation measures, mean absolute error (MAE), mean squared error (MSE), and R square error, represent the base for these. Comparative experimental results demonstrate that decision trees perform better at predicting effort than other technique

Use Case Point Approach Based Software Effort Estimation using Various Support Vector Regression Kernel Methods

The job of software effort estimation is a critical one in the early stages of the software development life cycle when the details of requirements are usually not clearly identified. Various optimization techniques help in improving the accuracy of effort estimation. The Support Vector Regression (SVR) is one of several different soft-computing techniques that help in getting optimal estimated values. The idea of SVR is based upon the computation of a linear regression function in a high dimensional feature space where the input data are mapped via a nonlinear function. Further, the SVR kernel methods can be applied in transforming the input data and then based on these transformations, an optimal boundary between the possible outputs can be obtained. The main objective of the research work carried out in this paper is to estimate the software effort using use case point approach. The use case point approach relies on the use case diagram to estimate the size and effort of software projects. Then, an attempt has been made to optimize the results obtained from use case point analysis using various SVR kernel methods to achieve better prediction accuracy.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 11 Tables, International Journal of Information Processing (IJIP

Incorporating statistical and machine learning techniques into the optimization of correction factors for software development effort estimation

Accurate effort estimation is necessary for efficient management of software development projects, as it relates to human resource management. Ensemble methods, which employ multiple statistical and machine learning techniques, are more robust, reliable, and accurate effort estimation techniques. This study develops a stacking ensemble model based on optimization correction factors by integrating seven statistical and machine learning techniques (K-nearest neighbor, random forest, support vector regression, multilayer perception, gradient boosting, linear regression, and decision tree). The grid search optimization method is used to obtain valid search ranges and optimal configuration values, allowing more accurate estimation. We conducted experiments to compare the proposed method with related methods, such as use case points-based single methods, optimization correction factors-based single methods, and ensemble methods. The estimation accuracies of the methods were evaluated using statistical tests and unbiased performance measures on a total of four datasets, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method more clearly. The proposed method successfully maintained its estimation accuracy across the four experimental datasets and gave the best results in terms of the sum of squares errors, mean absolute error, root mean square error, mean balance relative error, mean inverted balance relative error, median of magnitude of relative error, and percentage of prediction (0.25). The p-value for the t-test showed that the proposed method is statistically superior to other methods in terms of estimation accuracy. The results show that the proposed method is a comprehensive approach for improving estimation accuracy and minimizing project risks in the early stages of software development.Faculty of Applied Informatics, Tomas Bata University, (IGA/CebiaTech/2022/001, RVO/FAI/2021/002)Tomas Bata University in Zlin [RVO/FAI/2021/002, IGA/CebiaTech/2022/001

Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling for Tailoring Metric Thresholds

Software is highly contextual. While there are cross-cutting `global' lessons, individual software projects exhibit many `local' properties. This data heterogeneity makes drawing local conclusions from global data dangerous. A key research challenge is to construct locally accurate prediction models that are informed by global characteristics and data volumes. Previous work has tackled this problem using clustering and transfer learning approaches, which identify locally similar characteristics. This paper applies a simpler approach known as Bayesian hierarchical modeling. We show that hierarchical modeling supports cross-project comparisons, while preserving local context. To demonstrate the approach, we conduct a conceptual replication of an existing study on setting software metrics thresholds. Our emerging results show our hierarchical model reduces model prediction error compared to a global approach by up to 50%.Comment: Short paper, published at MSR '18: 15th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories May 28--29, 2018, Gothenburg, Swede