Grey relational effort analysis technique using regression methods for software estimation

Abstract

Software project planning and estimation is the most important confront for software developers and researchers. It incorporates estimating the size of the software project to be produced, estimating the effort required, developing initial project schedules, and ultimately, estimating on the whole cost of the project. Numerous empirical explorations have been performed on the existing methods, but they lack convergence in choosing the best prediction methodology. Analogy based estimation is still one of the most extensively used method in industry which is based on finding effort from similar projects from the project repository. Two alternative approaches using analogy for estimation have been proposed in this study. Firstly, a precise and comprehensible predictive model based on the integration of Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) and regression has been discussed. Second approach deals with the uncertainty in the software projects, and how fuzzy set theory in fusion with grey relational analysis can minimize this uncertainty. Empirical results attained are remarkable indicating that the methodologies have a great potential and can be used as a candidate approaches for software effort estimation. The results obtained using both the methods are subjected to rigorous statistical testing using Wilcoxon signed rank test.