Cost estimation of software projects through case base reasoning

Abstract

One of the most challenging goals for the software development community is the definition and assessment of techniques and tools enabling the cost estimation of projects in the early phases of the software life cycle. Despite of the increasing needs and the available tools and methods, a satisfactory solution is still to be found.

During the last two years, has gained some interest in this community an approach based on analogy. Following this approach, an estimation is made starting from analogies with other software projects met in the past. The main reason for this trend is the increased flexibility with respect to other approaches. The main drawback of this method was the inadequacy of the software technologies to provide an effective and efficient implementation.

The experience reported here, demonstrates that CBR techniques allow a natural implementation of the estimation by analogy paradigm, and the software estimation by analogy in particular.