Empirically guided software effort guesstimation

Project LEAP (lightweight, empirical, antimeasurement dysfunction, and portable toolkit) is investigating tools and methods to support low-cost, empirically based software developer improvement. LEAP contains tools to simplify the collection of size and effort data. The collected data serves as input to a set of estimation tools. These tools can produce over a dozen analytical estimates of the effort required for a new project given an estimate of its size. To do this, they use various estimation methods such as linear, logarithmic, or exponential regressions. During project planning, the developer can review these estimates and select one of them or substitute a guesstimate based on his or her experience. The authors' study provides evidence that guesstimates, when informed by low-cost analytical methods, might be the most accurate method.