Circumstantial-evidence-based Judgment for Software Effort Estimation

Zheng Li, Liam O'Brien, He Zhang

2011

Abstract

Expert judgment for software effort estimation is oriented toward direct evidences that refer to actual effort of similar projects or activities through experts’ experiences. However, the availability of direct evidences implies the requirement of suitable experts together with past data. The circumstantial-evidence-based judgment proposed in this paper focuses on the development experiences deposited in human knowledge, and can then be used to qualitatively estimate implementation effort of different proposals of a new project by rational inference. To demonstrate the process of circumstantial-evidence-based judgment, this paper adopts propositional learning theory based diagnostic reasoning to infer and compare different effort estimates when implementing a Web service composition project with some different techniques and contexts. The exemplar shows our proposed work can help determine effort tradeoff before project implementation. Overall, circumstantial-evidence-based judgment is not an alternative but complementary to expert judgment so as to facilitate and improve software effort estimation.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Li Z., O'Brien L. and Zhang H. (2011). Circumstantial-evidence-based Judgment for Software Effort Estimation . In Proceeding of the 1st International Workshop on Evidential Assessment of Software Technologies - Volume 1: EAST, (ENASE 2011) ISBN 978-989-8425-58-4, pages 18-27


in Bibtex Style

@conference{east11,
author={Zheng Li and Liam O'Brien and He Zhang},
title={Circumstantial-evidence-based Judgment for Software Effort Estimation},
booktitle={Proceeding of the 1st International Workshop on Evidential Assessment of Software Technologies - Volume 1: EAST, (ENASE 2011)},
year={2011},
pages={18-27},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={},
isbn={978-989-8425-58-4},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceeding of the 1st International Workshop on Evidential Assessment of Software Technologies - Volume 1: EAST, (ENASE 2011)
TI - Circumstantial-evidence-based Judgment for Software Effort Estimation
SN - 978-989-8425-58-4
AU - Li Z.
AU - O'Brien L.
AU - Zhang H.
PY - 2011
SP - 18
EP - 27
DO -