Search Heuristics, Case-Based Reasoning and Software Project Effort Prediction

This paper reports on the use of search techniques to help optimise a case-based reasoning (CBR) system for predicting software project effort. A major problem, common to ML techniques in general, has been dealing with large numbers of case features, some of which can hinder the prediction process. Unfortunately searching for the optimal feature subset is a combinatorial problem and therefore NP-hard. This paper examines the use of random searching, hill climbing and forward sequential selection (FSS) to tackle this problem. Results from examining a set of real software project data show that even random searching was better than using all available for features (average error 35.6% rather than 50.8%). Hill climbing and FSS both produced results substantially better than the random search (15.3 and 13.1% respectively), but FSS was more computationally efficient. Providing a description of the fitness landscape of a problem along with search results is a step towards the classification of search problems and their assignment to optimum search techniques. This paper attempts to describe the fitness landscape of this problem by combining the results from random searches and hill climbing, as well as using multi-dimensional scaling to aid visualisation. Amongst other findings, the visualisation results suggest that some form of heuristic-based initialisation might prove useful for this problem

Human vs. Algorithm

We consider the roles of algorithm and human and their inter-relationships. As a vehicle for some of our ideas we describe an empirical investigation of software professionals using analogy-based tools and unaided search in order to solve various prediction problems. We conclude that there exist a class of software engineering problems which might be characterised as high value and low frequency where the human-algorithm interaction must be considered carefully if they are to be successfully deployed in industry

New ideas and emerging research: evaluating prediction system accuracy

BACKGROUND: Prediction e.g. of project cost is an important concern in software engineering. PROBLEM: Although many empirical validations of software engineering prediction systems have been published, no one approach dominates and sense-making of conflicting empirical results is proving challenging. METHOD: We propose a new approach to evaluating competing prediction systems based upon an unbiased statistic (Standardised Accuracy), analysis of results relative to the baseline technique of guessing and calculation of effect sizes. RESULTS: Two empirical studies are revisited and the published results are shown to be misleading when re-analysed using our new approach. CONCLUSION: Biased statistics such as MMRE are deprecated. By contrast our approach leads to valid results. Such steps will greatly assist in performing future meta-analyses

The role of Artificial Intelligence in Software Engineering

There has been a recent surge in interest in the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to Software Engineering (SE) problems. The work is typified by recent advances in Search Based Software Engineering, but also by long established work in Probabilistic reasoning and machine learning for Software Engineering. This paper explores some of the relationships between these strands of closely related work, arguing that they have much in common and sets out some future challenges in the area of AI for SE. © 2012 IEEE

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). 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Search-based techniques applied to optimization of project planning for a massive maintenance project

This paper evaluates the use of three different search-based techniques, namely genetic algorithms, hill climbing and simulated annealing, and two problem representations, for planning resource allocation in large massive maintenance projects. In particular the search-based approach aims to find an optimal or near optimal order in which to allocate work packages to programming teams, in order to minimize the project duration.The approach is validated by an empirical study of a large, commercial Y2K massive maintenance project, which compares these techniques with each other and with a random search (to provide base line comparison data).Results show that an ordering-based genome encoding (with tailored cross over operator) and the genetic algorithm appear to provide the most robust solution, though the hill climbing approach also performs well. The best search technique results reduce the project duration by as much as 50%

The Effect of Communication Overhead on Software Maintenance Project Staffing: a Search-Based Approach

Brooks ’ milestone ‘Mythical Man Month ’ established the observation that there is no simple conversion between peo-ple and time in large scale software projects. Communica-tion and training overheads yield a subtle and variable re-lationship between the person-months required for a project and the number of people needed to complete the task within a given time frame. This paper formalises several instantiations of Brooks’ law and uses these to construct project schedule and staffing instances — using a search-based project staffing and scheduling approach — on data from two large real world maintenance projects. The results reveal the impact of dif-ferent formulations of Brooks ’ law on project completion time and on staff distribution across teams, and the influ-ence of other factors such as the presence of dependen-cies between work packages on the effect of communication overhead

Bridging the semantic gap for software effort estimation by hierarchical feature selection techniques

Software project management is one of the significant activates in the software development process. Software Development Effort Estimation (SDEE) is a challenging task in the software project management. SDEE is an old activity in computer industry from 1940s and has been reviewed several times. A SDEE model is appropriate if it provides the accuracy and confidence simultaneously before software project contract. Due to the uncertain nature of development estimates and in order to increase the accuracy, researchers recently have focused on machine learning techniques. Choosing the most effective features to achieve higher accuracy in machine learning is crucial. In this paper, for narrowing the semantic gap in SDEE, a hierarchical method of filter and wrapper Feature Selection (FS) techniques and a fused measurement criteria are developed in a two-phase approach. In the first phase, two stage filter FS methods provide start sets for wrapper FS techniques. In the second phase, a fused criterion is proposed for measuring accuracy in wrapper FS techniques. Experimental results show the validity and efficiency of the proposed approach for SDEE over a variety of standard datasets

Dataset Quality Assessment: An extension for analogy based effort estimation

Abstract Estimation by Analogy (EBA