A Software benchmarking methodology for effort estimation

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2012
Nabi, Mina
Software project managers usually use benchmarking repositories to estimate effort, cost, and duration of the software development which will be used to appropriately plan, monitor and control the project activities. In addition, precision of benchmarking repositories is a critical factor in software effort estimation process which plays subsequently a critical role in the success of the software development project. In order to construct such a precise benchmarking data repository, it is important to have defined benchmarking data attributes and data characteristics and to have collected project data accordingly. On the other hand, studies show that data characteristics of benchmark data sets have impact on generalizing the studies which are based on using these datasets. Quality of data repository is not only depended on quality of collected data, but also it is related to how these data are collected. In this thesis, a benchmarking methodology is proposed for organizations to collect benchmarking data for effort estimation purposes. This methodology consists of three main components: benchmarking measures, benchmarking data collection processes, and benchmarking data collection tool. In this approach results of previous studies from the literature were used too. In order to verify and validate the methodology project data were collected in two middle size software organizations and one small size organization by using automated benchmarking data collection tool. Also, effort estimation models were constructed and evaluated for these projects data and impact of different characteristics of the projects was inspected in effort estimation models.

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Citation Formats
M. Nabi, “A Software benchmarking methodology for effort estimation,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2012.