Estimators characteristics and effort estimation of software projects

Effort estimation is an important part of software project management. Accurate estimates ensure planned project execution and compliance with the set time and budget constraints. Despite attempts to produce accurate estimates by using formal models there is no substantial evidence that these methods guarantee better estimates than those experts make. In order to improve the effort estimation process it is crucial to enhance understanding of the human estimator. When producing estimates each expert exhibits mental effort. In such situation estimator relies on his personal characteristics, some of which are, in context of effort estimation, more important than others. This research tries to identify these characteristics and their relative influences. Data for the research have been collected from projects executed in large company specialized for development of IT solutions in telecom domain. For identification of expert characteristics data mining approach is used (the multilayer perceptron neural network). We considered the use of this method as it is similar to the way human brain operates. Data sets used in modelling contain more than 2000 samples collected from analysed projects. The obtained results are highly intuitive and later could be used in the assessment of reliability of each estimator and estimates he produces.