Using Evolutionary Based Approaches to Estimate Software Development Effort

Software development effort estimation is a critical activity for the competitiveness of a software company; it is crucial for planning and monitoring project development and for delivering the product on time and within budget. In the last years, some attempts have been made to apply search-based approaches to estimate software development effort. In particular, some genetic algorithms have been defined and some empirical studies have been performed with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of the proposed approaches for estimating software development effort. The results reported in those studies seem to be promising. The objective of this chapter is to present a state of the art in the field by reporting on the most significant empirical studies undertaken so far. Furthermore, some suggestions for future research directions are also provided. © 2010, IGI Global.

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