An effort estimation support tool for agile software development: An empirical evaluation

Abstract

Accurate effort estimation is an important part of the software process. In Agile Software Development, the techniques for predicting effort are mostly based on expert judgment, but there are approaches based on Machine Learning. The theme continues to be challenging and a subject of further studies given the difficulty of finding accurate solutions to the problem. This paper proposes and evaluates a tool based on the decision tree method for effort estimation in agile projects. We evaluated our tool given its accuracy and ease of use collecting data from four projects. To evaluate the accuracy, we compared the values of Magnitude of Relative Error from the teams' estimations with the values provided by the tool. To evaluate the ease of use, we used the Technology Acceptance Mode. The initial results show that the tool can be reliably used with minimal training. In terms of accuracy, the tool achieved lower error compared to the estimates provided by the teams (mean: 19.05% vs 33.32%), and the evaluation means in TAM were higher than 4.0 in ten of the eleven variables analyzed on a Likert scale. From this work, we conclude that estimation by decision tree is a viable technique that, at the very least, can be used by project managers to complement current estimation techniques.