COST ESTIMATION MODEL FOR AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS USING EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS AND CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING APPROACH FACTOR ANALYSIS AND CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING APPROACH

Abstract

Agile software development has been attached much importance as a new software engineering methodology as it emphasizes on good communication between the developers, the rapid delivery of software, and change on demand. At early stages of software development, effort must be estimated to come up with a planned schedule and budget. From the Software Measurement point-of-view not every metrics and methods from conventional lifecycle models can be used without changes. In the recent past researchers have proposed different methodologies for cost estimation for software projects which use Agile Development methodology. In this thesis work we have proposed a new cost estimation model for Agile software development projects. In this model we apply Principal Component Analysis to reduce the dimensions of the attributes required and identify the key attributes which have maximum correlation to the development cost; and then use constraint solving approach to satisfy the criteria imposed by agile manifesto. We have extracted 12 factors (or components) for estimation of Development Cost and then constraint programming implementation using OZ is done so that the manifesto criteria are met. The proposed methodology is most suitable for agile projects as it uses constraint programming to explicitly check for satisfaction of agile manifestos. On comparison with other approaches under research we find that our model provides a low MMRE value i.e.50.63. Also the estimation error does not increase in high cost/complexity projects. Most Agile software Cost estimation processes rely on expert opinion or planning poker based cost estimation methods. However in case that is not available then our methodology can be used in case of unavailability of historical data or expert opinion. The extracted 12 factors can be used by the development team to estimate software development cost while still satisfying the conditions of agile manifesto. Hence we can safely say that the proposed cost estimation approach increases the precision and accuracy of estimates; and hence is better suited for the Agile Software Development Projects.