GVSEE: a new global model to estimate software services development effort

As software services have become a main part of companies in recent years, accurate and efficient estimates of required effort for their development has turned into a major concern. Furthermore, the high diversity, complexity, non-normality, and inconsistency of software services have made an estimation of the needed development effort a very difficult task. In spite of the numerous studies conducted, and improvements made, in the past, no single model has yet been introduced that can reliably estimate the required effort. Therefore, apparently, it is impossible to introduce a global and efficient model for all types of services. This article proposes a new model called Global Village Service Effort Estimator that emphasizes the idea Think locally, act globally.' Unlike previous studies, this model does not rely on a specific method and, in addition to combining methods, takes a local look at each software service with the help of fuzzy clustering. The model was evaluated on a real data-set International Software Benchmarking Standard Group and on two artificial data-sets, and obtained results indicated its tangible efficiency and the lack of accuracy of other models. Besides its greater accuracy, other advantages of the proposed model over the other models are its adaptability and flexibility in confronting complexities and uncertainties.