An empirical study of process-related attributes in segmented software cost-estimation relationships

Juan J. Cuadrado-Gallego, Miguel-Ángel Sicilia, Miguel Garre, Daniel Rodríguez
2006 Journal of Systems and Software  
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 more realistic models that use several local estimation relationships. Nonetheless, it may be
more » ... ized that using clustering algorithms without previous consideration of the influence of well-known project attributes misses the opportunity to obtain more realistic segments. In this paper, we describe the results of an empirical study using the ISBSG-8 database and the EM clustering algorithm that studies the influence of the consideration of two process-related attributes as drivers of the clustering process: the use of engineering methodologies and the use of CASE tools. The results provide evidence that such consideration conditions significantly the final model obtained, even though the resulting predictive quality is of a similar magnitude.
doi:10.1016/j.jss.2005.04.040 fatcat:7tvdnwvkizcafgi2ymg3frv34i