Polynomial analogy-based software development effort estimation using combined particle swarm optimization and simulated annealing

Software development effort estimation is an effective factor in the success or failure of software projects. There are several methods to estimate the effort of software projects, the most common of which is analogy-based estimation (ABE). In this article, a polynomial version of ABE (named PABE) is presented, in which, the project effort is calculated based on a polynomial ensemble of different ABE models. To optimize the controllable parameters of the PABE model, a combined global-local search metaheuristic algorithm based on particle swarm optimization and simulated annealing is utilized in two steps. At the first step, for each similarity and adaptation function, the optimized ABE model is determined by exploiting the optimal value of feature weights, the number of similar projects, and other parameters of the ABE model. Then, at the second step, the amount of effort attained by the optimized models is used for estimating the final effort by the proposed polynomial equation. The proposed PABE method has been successfully executed on five well-known software effort estimation datasets: Maxwell, Albrecht, Cocomo81, Desharnais, and Kemerer. Obtained results show the superiority of the proposed PABE model in terms of accuracy and efficiency compared to other techniques.