Abstract
Context
Risks associated with software projects play a significant role on delivery of software projects within a given budget. These risks are due to volatility in project requirements, availability of experienced personnel, ever-changing technology and many more project cost factors. Effort spent on managing the risks is termed as the risk exposure of the project. In this research, this risk exposure has been added to effort estimate of a software project. This total effort is termed as the integrated effort estimate.
Objective
To improve the accuracy of software effort estimates by integrating the risk exposure with the initial effort estimate of the project.
Method
A formula to calculate integrated effort estimate of a software project has been proposed in the paper. This proposed formula has been tested on two datasets collected from industry, one for waterfall projects and another for agile projects. Initial effort estimates for waterfall projects are calculated using CoCoMo II and for agile projects are calculated using story point approach by Ziauddin.
Results
The integrated effort estimates were more accurate than their corresponding initial effort estimates on all the four parameters: MMRE, SA, effect size and R2.
Conclusion
Integrated effort estimates are more comprehensive, reliable, and accurate than the initial effort estimates for the project.
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Availability of data and material
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability
Not applicable.
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Prerna Singal, Prabha Sharma and A. Charan Kumari declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Singal, P., Sharma, P. & Kumari, A.C. Integrating software effort estimation with risk management. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 13, 2413–2428 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-022-01652-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-022-01652-y