Multi-criteria decision making approach for the selection of software effort estimation model

Article history: Received: October 1, 2016 Received in revised format: November 16, 2016 Accepted: March 16, 2017 Available online: March 16, 2017 Software development with minimum effort has become a challenging task for the software developers. Software effort may be defined as the prediction process of the effort required to develop any software. Many software effort estimation models have been developed in the past, but it is observed that none of them can be applied successfully in all kinds of projects in different environments that raise the problem of the software effort estimation model selection. To select the suitable software effort estimation model, many conflicting selection criteria must be considered in the decision process. The present study emphasizes on the development of a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach by integrating Fuzzy Set Theory and Weighted Distance Based Approximation. To show the consistency of the proposed approach, methodology validation is also performed by making comparison with existing methodologies and to check the criticality of the selection criterion, sensitivity analysis is also performed. © 2017 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.