Story Points Based Effort Estimation Model for Software Maintenance

Software is developed with prior requirements and it is maintained continuously with rapid progresses in domain, technology, economy, and other fields. Software maintenance is vital and it requires more efforts and resources than development phase. There are fewer methods available for maintenance effort estimation. An iterative maintenance life cycle using extreme programming is a model for software maintenance based on agile methodology that uses RC stories as requirement artifacts. Agile methodology uses analogy and expert opinion based estimation techniques such as planning poker. But in software maintenance, historical data and experts may not be present or accurate. Therefore, a heuristic method is required for the calculation of maintenance efforts. In this paper, we propose a Software Maintenance Effort Estimation Model (SMEEM) for software maintenance estimation. The SMEEM technique uses story points to calculate the volume of maintenance and value adjustment factors that are affecting story points for effort estimation. The proposed model will be illustrated with various types of maintenance projects. The model generates accurate and effective results as compared to other software maintenance effort estimation models. This model is applicable only for agile and extreme programming based maintenance environment. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of C3IT