Applying Genetic Programming for Estimating Software Development Effort of Short-scale Projects

Statistical regression and neural networks have frequently been used to estimate the development effort of both short and large software projects. In this paper, a genetic programming technique is used with the goal of estimating the effort required in the development of short-scale projects. Results obtained are compared with those generated using the first two techniques. A sample of 132 short-scale projects developed by 40 programmers was used for generating the three models, whereas another sample of 77 projects developed by 24 programmers was used for validating those three models. Accuracy results from the model obtained with genetic programming suggest that it could be used to estimate software development effort of short-scale projects when these projects are developed in a disciplined manner within a development controlled environment.