Investigating effort prediction of web-based applications using CBR on the ISBSG dataset

As web-based applications become more popular and more sophisticated, so does the requirement for early accurate estimates of the effort required to build such systems. Case-based reasoning (CBR) has been shown to be a reasonably effective estimation strategy, although it has not been widely explored in the context of web applications. This paper reports on a study carried out on a subset of the ISBSG dataset to examine the optimal number of analogies that should be used in making a prediction. The results show that it is not possible to select such a value with confidence, and that, in common with other findings in different domains, the effectiveness of CBR is hampered by other factors including the characteristics of the underlying dataset (such as the spread of data and presence of outliers) and the calculation employed to evaluate the distance function (in particular, the treatment of numeric and categorical data)

Application of mutual information-based sequential feature selection to ISBSG mixed data

[EN] There is still little research work focused on feature selection (FS) techniques including both categorical and continuous features in Software Development Effort Estimation (SDEE) literature. This paper addresses the problem of selecting the most relevant features from ISBSG (International Software Benchmarking Standards Group) dataset to be used in SDEE. The aim is to show the usefulness of splitting the ranked list of features provided by a mutual information-based sequential FS approach in two, regarding categorical and continuous features. These lists are later recombined according to the accuracy of a case-based reasoning model. Thus, four FS algorithms are compared using a complete dataset with 621 projects and 12 features from ISBSG. On the one hand, two algorithms just consider the relevance, while the remaining two follow the criterion of maximizing relevance and also minimizing redundancy between any independent feature and the already selected features. On the other hand, the algorithms that do not discriminate between continuous and categorical features consider just one list, whereas those that differentiate them use two lists that are later combined. As a result, the algorithms that use two lists present better performance than those algorithms that use one list. Thus, it is meaningful to consider two different lists of features so that the categorical features may be selected more frequently. We also suggest promoting the usage of Application Group, Project Elapsed Time, and First Data Base System features with preference over the more frequently used Development Type, Language Type, and Development Platform.Fernández-Diego, M.; González-Ladrón-De-Guevara, F. (2018). Application of mutual information-based sequential feature selection to ISBSG mixed data. Software Quality Journal. 26(4):1299-1325. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-017-9391-5S12991325264Angelis, L., & Stamelos, I. (2000). A simulation tool for efficient analogy based cost estimation. Empirical Software Engineering, 5(1), 35–68. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009897800559 .Auer, M., Trendowicz, A., Graser, B., Haunschmid, E., & Biffl, S. (2006). Optimal project feature weights in analogy-based cost estimation: improvement and limitations. Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 32(2), 83–92.Awada, W., Khoshgoftaar, T. M., Dittman, D., Wald, R., Napolitano, A. (2012). A review of the stability of feature selection techniques for bioinformatics data. In 2012 I.E. 13th International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IRI) (pp. 356–363). Presented at the 2012 I.E. 13th International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IRI). https://doi.org/10.1109/IRI.2012.6303031 .Battiti, R. (1994). Using mutual information for selecting features in supervised neural net learning. Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions, 5(4), 537–550.Bennasar, M., Hicks, Y., & Setchi, R. (2015). Feature selection using joint mutual information maximisation. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(22), 8520–8532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2015.07.007 .Bibi, S., Tsoumakas, G., Stamelos, I., & Vlahavas, I. (2008). Regression via classification applied on software defect estimation. Expert Systems with Applications, 34(3), 2091–2101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2007.02.012 .Chandrashekar, G., & Sahin, F. (2014). A survey on feature selection methods. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 40(1), 16–28.Chatzipetrou, P., Papatheocharous, E., Angelis, L., Andreou, A. S. (2012). An investigation of software effort phase distribution using compositional data analysis. In 2012 38th EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) (pp. 367–375). Presented at the 2012 38th EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA). https://doi.org/10.1109/SEAA.2012.50 .Chen, Z., Menzies, T., Port, D., & Boehm, B. (2005). Feature subset selection can improve software cost estimation accuracy. In Proceedings of the 2005 workshop on predictor models in software engineering (pp. 1–6). New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/1082983.1083171 .Chiu, N.-H., & Huang, S.-J. (2007). The adjusted analogy-based software effort estimation based on similarity distances. Journal of Systems and Software, 80(4), 628–640.Dash, M., & Liu, H. (2003). Consistency-based search in feature selection. Artificial Intelligence, 151(1), 155–176.Dejaeger, K., Verbeke, W., Martens, D., & Baesens, B. (2012). Data mining techniques for software effort estimation: a comparative study. Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 38(2), 375–397. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2011.55 .Deng, K., & MacDonell, S. G. (2008). Maximising data retention from the ISBSG repository. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering (pp. 21–30). Swinton: British Computer Society http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2227115.2227118 . Accessed 21 Jan 2014.Doquire, G., & Verleysen, M. (2011). An hybrid approach to feature selection for mixed categorical and continuous data. In International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Information Retrieval. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/90765 . Accessed 2 Nov 2015.Dudani, S. A. (1976). The distance-weighted k-nearest-neighbor rule. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, SMC, 6(4), 325–327. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMC.1976.5408784 .Estévez, P. A., Tesmer, M., Perez, C. A., & Zurada, J. M. (2009). Normalized mutual information feature selection. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 20(2), 189–201. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNN.2008.2005601 .Fayyad, U.M., & Irani, K.B. (1993). Multi-Interval Discretization of Continuous-Valued Attributes for Classification Learning. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Uncertainty in AI (pp. 1022–1027). Presented at the International Joint Conference on Uncertainty in AI. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220815890_Multi-Interval_Discretization_of_Continuous-Valued_Attributes_for_Classification_Learning . Accessed 22 June 2016.Fernández-Diego, M., & González-Ladrón-de-Guevara, F. (2014). Potential and limitations of the ISBSG dataset in enhancing software engineering research: a mapping review. Information and Software Technology, 56(6), 527–544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2014.01.003 .Ferreira, A., & Figueiredo, M. (2011). Unsupervised joint feature discretization and selection. In J. Vitrià, J. M. Sanches, & M. Hernández (Eds.), Pattern recognition and image analysis (Vol. 6669, pp. 200–207). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-642-21257-4_25 . Accessed 4 Mar 2016.Fleuret, F. (2004). Fast binary feature selection with conditional mutual information. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 5, 1531–1555.González-Ladrón-de-Guevara, F., Fernández-Diego, M., & Lokan, C. (2016). The usage of ISBSG data fields in software effort estimation: a systematic mapping study. Journal of Systems and Software, 113, 188–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2015.11.040 .Gupta, P., Jain, S., & Jain, A. (2014). A review of fast clustering-based feature subset selection algorithm. International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, 3(11), 86–91.Guyon, I., & Elisseeff, A. (2003). An introduction to variable and feature selection. The Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3, 1157–1182.Hall, M. A., & Holmes, G. (2003). Benchmarking attribute selection techniques for discrete class data mining. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 15(6), 1437–1447. https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2003.1245283 .Hausser, J., & Strimmer, K. (2009). Entropy inference and the James-Stein estimator, with application to nonlinear gene association networks. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 10(Jul), 1469–1484.Hill, P. (2010). Practical software project estimation: a toolkit for estimating software development effort & duration. McGraw Hill Professional.Hsu, H.-H., Hsieh, C.-W., & Lu, M.-D. (2011). Hybrid feature selection by combining filters and wrappers. Expert Systems with Applications, 38(7), 8144–8150.Huang, S.-J., & Chiu, N.-H. (2006). Optimization of analogy weights by genetic algorithm for software effort estimation. Information and Software Technology, 48(11), 1034–1045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2005.12.020 .Huang, S.-J., Chiu, N.-H., & Liu, Y.-J. (2008). A comparative evaluation on the accuracies of software effort estimates from clustered data. Information and Software Technology, 50(9–10), 879–888. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2008.02.005 .Huang, J., Li, Y.-F., & Xie, M. (2015). An empirical analysis of data preprocessing for machine learning-based software cost estimation. Information and Software Technology, 67, 108–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2015.07.004 .ISBSG. (2013a). ISBSG Dataset Release 12. ISBSG. http://isbsg.org/ . Accessed 1 Mar 2016.ISBSG. (2013b). ISBSG Guidelines Release 12.ISBSG. (2013c). ISBSG Data Demographics Release 12.Jeffery, R., Ruhe, M., Wieczorek, I. (2001). Using public domain metrics to estimate software development effort. In Software Metrics Symposium, 2001. METRICS 2001. Proceedings. Seventh International (pp. 16–27). https://doi.org/10.1109/METRIC.2001.915512 .Jiang, Z., & Comstock, C. (2007). The factors significant to software development productivity. In C. Ardil (Ed.), Proceedings of World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, Vol 19 (Vol. 19, pp. 160–164). Presented at the Conference of the World-Academy-of-Science-Engineering-and-Technology, Bangkok: World Acad Sci, Eng & Tech-Waset.Jørgensen, M., Indahl, U., & Sjøberg, D. (2003). Software effort estimation by analogy and ‘regression toward the mean’. Journal of Systems and Software, 68(3), 253–262. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0164-1212(03)00066-9 .Kabir, M. M., Shahjahan, M., & Murase, K. (2011). A new local search based hybrid genetic algorithm for feature selection. Neurocomputing, 74(17), 2914–2928.Kadoda, G., Cartwright, M., Chen, L., Shepperd, M. (2000). Experiences using case-based reasoning to predict software project effort. In EASE 2000 (pp. 2–3). Presented at the EASE 2000, Staffordshire, UK.Keung, J., Kocaguneli, E., & Menzies, T. (2012). Finding conclusion stability for selecting the best effort predictor in software effort estimation. Automated Software Engineering, 20(4), 543–567. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-012-0108-5 .Kirsopp, C., Shepperd, M. J., Hart, J. (2002). Search heuristics, case-based reasoning and software project effort prediction. In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (pp. 9–13). New York, USA. http://v-scheiner.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/1554 . Accessed 27 Jan 2016.Kohavi, R., & John, G. H. (1997). Wrappers for feature subset selection. Artificial Intelligence, 97(1–2), 273–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0004-3702(97)00043-X .Kwak, N., & Choi, C.-H. (2002). Input feature selection for classification problems. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 13(1), 143–159. https://doi.org/10.1109/72.977291 .Langdon, W. B., Dolado, J., Sarro, F., & Harman, M. (2016). Exact mean absolute error of baseline predictor, MARP0. Information and Software Technology, 73, 16–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2016.01.003 .Li, Y. F., Xie, M., & Goh, T. N. (2009). A study of mutual information based feature selection for case based reasoning in software cost estimation. Expert Systems with Applications, 36(3), 5921–5931.Liu, H., & Motoda, H. (2012). Feature selection for knowledge discovery and data mining (Vol. 454). Springer Science & Business Media. https://books.google.es/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aaDbBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP10&dq=Feature+selection+for+knowledge+discovery+and+data+mining&ots=iuMhcWZGcf&sig=KlmNEIcsBdDVs-m1HUuICfpYZiM . Accessed 25 Jan 2016.Liu, H., & Yu, L. (2005). Toward integrating feature selection algorithms for classification and clustering. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 17(4), 491–502. https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2005.66 .Liu, H., Wei, R., & Jiang, G. (2013). A hybrid feature selection scheme for mixed attributes data. Computational and Applied Mathematics, 32(1), 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40314-013-0019-5 .Liu, Q., Wang, J., Xiao, J., Zhu, H. (2014). Mutual information based feature selection for symbolic interval data. In International Conference on Software Intelligence Technologies and Applications International Conference on Frontiers of Internet of Things 2014 (pp. 62–69). Presented at the International Conference on Software Intelligence Technologies and Applications International Conference on Frontiers of Internet of Things 2014. https://doi.org/10.1049/cp.2014.1537 .Lokan, C. (2005). What should you optimize when building an estimation model? In Software Metrics, 2005. 11th IEEE International Symposium (pp. 1–10). https://doi.org/10.1109/METRICS.2005.55 .Lokan, C., & Mendes, E. (2009a). Investigating the use of chronological split for software effort estimation. Software, IET, 3(5), 422–434. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-sen.2008.0107 .Lokan, C., & Mendes, E. (2009b). Applying moving windows to software effort estimation. In Proceedings of the 2009 3rd international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement (pp. 111–122). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/ESEM.2009.5316019 .Lokan, C., & Mendes, E. (2012). Investigating the use of duration-based moving windows to improve software effort prediction. In Software Engineering Conference (APSEC), 2012 19th Asia-Pacific (Vol. 1, pp. 818–827). Presented at the Software Engineering Conference (APSEC), 2012 19th Asia-Pacific. https://doi.org/10.1109/APSEC.2012.74 .Lustgarten, J.L., Visweswaran, S., Grover, H., Gopalakrishnan, V. (2008). An evaluation of discretization methods for learning rules from biomedical datasets. In BIOCOMP (pp. 527–532).Mandal, M., & Mukhopadhyay, A. (2013). An improved minimum redundancy maximum relevance approach for feature selection in gene expression data. Procedia Technology, 10, 20–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protcy.2013.12.332 .Mendes, E., Watson, I., Triggs, C., Mosley, N., & Counsell, S. (2003). A comparative study of cost estimation models for web hypermedia applications. Empirical Software Engineering, 8(2), 163–196.Mendes, E., Lokan, C., Harrison, R., Triggs, C. (2005). A replicated comparison of cross-company and within-company effort estimation models using the ISBSG database. In Software Metrics, 2005. 11th IEEE International Symposium (pp. 1–10). https://doi.org/10.1109/METRICS.2005.4 .Moses, J., Farrow, M., Parrington, N., & Smith, P. (2006). A productivity benchmarking case study using Bayesian credible intervals. Software Quality Journal, 14(1), 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-006-6000-4 .Núñez, H., Sànchez-Marrè, M., Cortés, U., Comas, J., Martínez, M., Rodríguez-Roda, I., & Poch, M. (2004). A comparative study on the use of similarity measures in case-based reasoning to improve the classification of environmental system situations. Environmental Modelling & Software, 19(9), 809–819. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2003.03.003 .Oh, I.-S., Lee, J.-S., & Moon, B.-R. (2004). Hybrid genetic algorithms for feature selection. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on, 26(11), 1424–1437.Peng, H., Long, F., & Ding, C. (2005). Feature selection based on mutual information criteria of max-dependency, max-relevance, and min-redundancy. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 27(8), 1226–1238. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPAMI.2005.159 .R Core Team. (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing https://www.R-project.org/ .Romanski, P., & Kotthoff, L. (2014). FSelector: Selecting attributes. R package version 0.20. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=FSelector .Shannon, C. E. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Shepperd, M., & MacDonell, S. (2012). Evaluating prediction systems in software project estimation. Information and Software Technology, 54(8), 820–827.Shepperd, M., & Schofield, C. (1997). Estimating software project effort using analogies. Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 23(11), 736–743.Somol, P., Pudil, P., & Kittler, J. (2004). Fast branch & bound algorithms for optimal feature selection. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on, 26(7), 900–912.Song, Q., & Shepperd, M. (2007). A new imputation method for small software project data sets. Journal of Systems and Software, 80(1), 51–62.Top, O. O., Ozkan, B., Nabi, M., Demirors, O. (2011). Internal and External Software Benchmark Repository Utilization for Effort Estimation. In Software Measurement, 2011 Joint Conference of the 21st Int’l Workshop on and 6th Int’l Conference on Software Process and Product Measurement (IWSM-MENSURA) (pp. 302–307). https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSM-MENSURA.2011.41 .Vinh, L.T., Thang, N.D., Lee, Y.-K. (2010). An improved maximum relevance and minimum redundancy feature selection algorithm based on normalized mutual information. In 2010 10th IEEE/IPSJ International Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT) (pp. 395–398). Presented at the 2010 10th IEEE/IPSJ International Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT). https://doi.org/10.1109/SAINT.2010.50 .Witten, I.H., Frank, E., Hall, M.A., Pal, C.J. (2011). Data mining: Practical machine learning tools and techniques. Morgan Kaufmann

Pragmatic cost estimation for web applications

Cost estimation for web applications is an interesting and difficult challenge for researchers and industrial practitioners. It is a particularly valuable area of ongoing commercial research. Attaining on accurate cost estimation for web applications is an essential element in being able to provide competitive bids and remaining successful in the market. The development of prediction techniques over thirty years ago has contributed to several different strategies. Unfortunately there is no collective evidence to give substantial advice or guidance for industrial practitioners. Therefore to address this problem, this thesis shows the way by investigating the characteristics of the dataset by combining the literature review and industrial survey findings. The results of the systematic literature review, industrial survey and an initial investigation, have led to an understanding that dataset characteristics may influence the cost estimation prediction techniques. From this, an investigation was carried out on dataset characteristics. However, in the attempt to structure the characteristics of dataset it was found not to be practical or easy to get a defined structure of dataset characteristics to use as a basis for prediction model selection. Therefore the thesis develops a pragmatic cost estimation strategy based on collected advice and general sound practice in cost estimation. The strategy is composed of the following five steps: test whether the predictions are better than the means of the dataset; test the predictions using accuracy measures such as MMRE, Pred and MAE knowing their strengths and weaknesses; investigate the prediction models formed to see if they are sensible and reasonable model; perform significance testing on the predictions; and get the effect size to establish preference relations of prediction models. The results from this pragmatic cost estimation strategy give not only advice on several techniques to choose from, but also give reliable results. Practitioners can be more confident about the estimation that is given by following this pragmatic cost estimation strategy. It can be concluded that the practitioners should focus on the best strategy to apply in cost estimation rather than focusing on the best techniques. Therefore, this pragmatic cost estimation strategy could help researchers and practitioners to get reliable results. The improvement and replication of this strategy over time will produce much more useful and trusted results.Cost estimation for web applications is an interesting and difficult challenge for researchers and industrial practitioners. It is a particularly valuable area of ongoing commercial research. Attaining on accurate cost estimation for web applications is an essential element in being able to provide competitive bids and remaining successful in the market. The development of prediction techniques over thirty years ago has contributed to several different strategies. Unfortunately there is no collective evidence to give substantial advice or guidance for industrial practitioners. Therefore to address this problem, this thesis shows the way by investigating the characteristics of the dataset by combining the literature review and industrial survey findings. The results of the systematic literature review, industrial survey and an initial investigation, have led to an understanding that dataset characteristics may influence the cost estimation prediction techniques. From this, an investigation was carried out on dataset characteristics. However, in the attempt to structure the characteristics of dataset it was found not to be practical or easy to get a defined structure of dataset characteristics to use as a basis for prediction model selection. Therefore the thesis develops a pragmatic cost estimation strategy based on collected advice and general sound practice in cost estimation. The strategy is composed of the following five steps: test whether the predictions are better than the means of the dataset; test the predictions using accuracy measures such as MMRE, Pred and MAE knowing their strengths and weaknesses; investigate the prediction models formed to see if they are sensible and reasonable model; perform significance testing on the predictions; and get the effect size to establish preference relations of prediction models. The results from this pragmatic cost estimation strategy give not only advice on several techniques to choose from, but also give reliable results. Practitioners can be more confident about the estimation that is given by following this pragmatic cost estimation strategy. It can be concluded that the practitioners should focus on the best strategy to apply in cost estimation rather than focusing on the best techniques. Therefore, this pragmatic cost estimation strategy could help researchers and practitioners to get reliable results. The improvement and replication of this strategy over time will produce much more useful and trusted results

Effort Estimation of Agile and Web-Based Software Using Artificial Neural Networks

The agile methodology of software development is accepted as a superior alternative to conventional methods of software development, because of its inherent benefits like iterative development, rapid delivery and reduced risk. Hence, software developers are required to estimate the effort necessary to develop projects by agile methodology in an efficient manner because the requirements keep on changing. Web has become a part and parcel of our lives. People depend on Internet for almost everything these days. Many business units depend on Internet for communication with clients and for outsourcing load to other branches. In such a scenario, there is a necessity of efficient development of web-based software. For improving the efficiency of software development, resource utilization must be optimum. For achieving this, we need to be able to ascertain effectively, what kind of people/materials are required in what quantity, for development. This research aims at developing efficient effort estimation models for agile and web-based software by using various neural networks such as Feed-Forward Neural Network (FFNN), Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFN), Functional Link Artificial Neural Network (FLANN) and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) and provide a comparative assessment of their performance. The approach used for agile software effort estimation is the Story Point Approach and that for web-based software effort estimation is the IFPUG Function Point Approach

Data Mining and Machine Learning for Software Engineering

Software engineering is one of the most utilizable research areas for data mining. Developers have attempted to improve software quality by mining and analyzing software data. In any phase of software development life cycle (SDLC), while huge amount of data is produced, some design, security, or software problems may occur. In the early phases of software development, analyzing software data helps to handle these problems and lead to more accurate and timely delivery of software projects. Various data mining and machine learning studies have been conducted to deal with software engineering tasks such as defect prediction, effort estimation, etc. This study shows the open issues and presents related solutions and recommendations in software engineering, applying data mining and machine learning techniques

Experience: Quality benchmarking of datasets used in software effort estimation

Data is a cornerstone of empirical software engineering (ESE) research and practice. Data underpin numerous process and project management activities, including the estimation of development effort and the prediction of the likely location and severity of defects in code. Serious questions have been raised, however, over the quality of the data used in ESE. Data quality problems caused by noise, outliers, and incompleteness have been noted as being especially prevalent. Other quality issues, although also potentially important, have received less attention. In this study, we assess the quality of 13 datasets that have been used extensively in research on software effort estimation. The quality issues considered in this article draw on a taxonomy that we published previously based on a systematic mapping of data quality issues in ESE. Our contributions are as follows: (1) an evaluation of the “fitness for purpose” of these commonly used datasets and (2) an assessment of the utility of the taxonomy in terms of dataset benchmarking. We also propose a template that could be used to both improve the ESE data collection/submission process and to evaluate other such datasets, contributing to enhanced awareness of data quality issues in the ESE community and, in time, the availability and use of higher-quality datasets

Effort Estimation Methods in Software Development Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Estimation of effort for the proposed software is a standout amongst the most essential activities in project management. Proper estimation of effort is often desirable in order to avoid any sort of failures in a project and is the practice to adopted by developers at the very beginning stage of the software development life cycle. Estimating the effort and schedule with a higher accuracy is a challenge that attracts attention of researchers as well as practitioners. Predicting the effort required to develop a software to a certain level of accuracy is definitely a difficult assignment for a manager or system analyst, when the requirements are not very clearly identified. Effort estimation helps project managers to determine time and effort required for the successful completion of the project. In order to help the organization in developing qualitative products within a planned time frame, the job of appropriate software effort estimation is of primary requirement. For measuring the cost and effort of software development, traditional software estimation techniques like Constructive Cost Estimation (COCOMO) model and Function Point Analysis (FPA) have not been proved very much satisfactory, because of uncertainties associated with parameters such as Line Of Code (LOC) and Function Point (FP) respectively, used for procedural programming concept. The procedural oriented design splits the data and procedure, whereas accepted practice of present day i.e., the object-oriented design combines both of them Since class and use case are the basic logical units of an object-oriented system, the use of Class Point (CP) and Use Case Point (UCP) approach to estimate the project effort helps to get more accurate result. For projects based on the aspect of Web Engineering, effort estimation practice is identified as a critical issue Considering these facts, there is a strong need for formal estimation of web-based projects, which can be accomplished by the help of International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) dataset. Similarly, in case of agile projects, Story Point Approach (SPA) is used to measure the effort required to implement a user story. By adding up the estimates of user stories which were nished during an iteration (story point iteration), the project velocity is obtained. The dataset related to CP, UCP and SPA are collected from previous projects mentioned in few research articles or from industries in order to assess the results. In order to create results of estimation with more accuracy, when managing issues of complex connections in the middle of inputs as well as yields, and where, there is a distortion in the inputs by high noise levels, the application of machine learning (ML) techniques helps to bring out results with more accuracy. A number of past research studies indicate that no single technique turns out to be the best for all cases. This is because of the dependency of system's execution altogether on the predicted function types, variations in properties of collected data, number of tests, noise ratio and so on. Hence the use of ML techniques in order to cope with issues arises in real-life situation is considered to be worthwhile. The research work carried out here presents the use of various ML techniques for software effort estimation using CP, UCP, Web-based and SPA approaches. The ML techniques are implemented taking into consideration of related dataset to predict the required effort