skip to main content
10.1145/2460999.2461002acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageseaseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Realising web effort estimation: a qualitative investigation

Published: 14 April 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Context: Reliable effort estimation is essential for better management of Web projects, hence the need to identify what are the key factors that affect effort estimates for new Web projects and how they are inter-related. Objective: This paper improves our understanding of Web effort estimation using as basis the knowledge of Web effort estimation experts. Method: We employed qualitative research with the participation of four different Web development companies in Manaus (Brazil) using semi-structured interviews for data collection; our data analysis was carried out using Grounded Theory-based procedures to identify and combine factors affecting the estimation effort of Web projects. Results: We identified four main groupings (categories) of factors - Web project, Web development complexity, Web development team, and Clients. Each of these groupings contains a set of factors that impact upon Web effort estimation. Conclusions: This is the first time that qualitative research is employed in the field of Web effort estimation to further understand and help improve this process. In addition, some of the factors found had never been identified in any of the previous studies in this field, thus suggesting that the use of Grounded Theory-based procedures may provide a way to enrich our understanding of the phenomenon under investigation via the identification of factors that overlap and also complement those from previous studies.

References

[1]
Agusa, K. 2004. Software Engineering Evolution. 7th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution. Proceedings. Page(s): 3--8.
[2]
Azhar, D. A Systematic Review of Web Resource Estimation. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~damir/SLR/, 2012.
[3]
Azhar, D., Mendes, E., and Riddle, P. 2012. A Systematic Review of Web Resource Estimation, Proceedings of Promise'12.
[4]
Baresi, L., Morasca, S., and Paolini, P. 2002 An empirical study on the design effort for Web applications, Proceedings of WISE 2002, pp. 345--354.
[5]
Boehm, B. W. and Valerdi, R. 2008. Achievements and Challenges in Cocomo-based software resource estimation, Software, IEEE, Volume 25, Issue 5, Sept.-Oct. 2008 Page(s):74--83
[6]
Conte, S. Dunsmore, H. Shen, V. Software Engineering Metrics and Models, Benjamin/Cummings, 1986
[7]
Conte, T. U., Vaz, V. T, Massolar, J., Mendes, E., and Travassos, G. H. 2009. Improving a Web Usability Inspection Technique using Qualitative and Quantitative Data from an Observational Study. Proceedings of the 2009 XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering Page(s): 227--235
[8]
Corazza, A. Di Martino, S. Ferrucci, F. Gravino, C. Sarro, F. Mendes, E. 2011. Using tabu search to configure support vector regression for effort estimation. Empirical Software Engineering. Page(s) 1--41
[9]
Costagliola, G., Martino, S. Di, Ferrucci, F., Gravino, C., Tortora, G., and Vitiello, G. 2006 Effort estimation modeling techniques: a case study for web applications, Procs. Intl. Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE'06), pp. 9--16.
[10]
Fenton, N. Marsh, W. Neil, M. Cates, P. Forey, S. and Tailor, M. 2004. Making resource decisions for software projects. Software Engineering. ICSE 2004. Proceedings. 26th International Conference, 23--28 May 2004 Page(s):397--406
[11]
Glaser, B., and Strauss, A. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. New York, Aldine Transaction. 1967.
[12]
Kitchenham, B. A. 2007. Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering (version 2.3), Software Engineering Group, School of Computer Science and Mathematics, Keele University and Department of Computer Science, University of Durham. July 2007.
[13]
Kitchenham, B. Mendes, E. Travassos, G. H. 2006. A systematic review of cross-company vs. within-company cost estimation studies. Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. EASE 2006. Proceedings.10th International Conference. Page(s) 89--98
[14]
Kitchenham, B. A. Pickard, L. M. MacDonell, S. G. and Shepperd, M. J. 2001. What accuracy statistics really measure. IEE Proceedings -- Software, Volume 148, Issue 3. Page(s):81--85
[15]
Kocaguneli, E. Menzies, T. Keung, J. 2011. On the Value of Ensemble Effort Estimation. Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on.
[16]
Mangia, L., and Paiano, R. 2003. MMWA: A Software Sizing Model for Web Applications, Proc. Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, pp. 53--63.
[17]
Mendes, E. 2007. A Comparison of Techniques for Web Effort Estimation. Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. ESEM 2007. First International Symposium. 20--21 Sept. 2007 Page(s):334--343
[18]
Mendes, E. 2007. Predicting Web Development Effort Using a Bayesian Network, Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. EASE 2007. Proceedings. 11th International Conference. April 2007.
[19]
Mendes, E. 2009. Web Cost Estimation and Productivity Benchmarking. In Software Engineering, Andrea Lucia and Filomena Ferrucci (Eds.). Lecture Notes In Computer Science, Vol. 5413. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 194--222.
[20]
Mendes, E., and Counsell, S. 2000. Web Development Effort Estimation using Analogy, Proc. 2000 Australian Software Engineering Conference, pp. 203--212.
[21]
Mendes, E., and Kitchenham, B. A. 2004. Further Comparison of Cross-company and Within-company Effort Estimation Models for Web Applications, Proc. IEEE Metrics, pp. 348--357.
[22]
Mendes, E., Mosley, N. and Counsell, S. 2001. Web metrics - Metrics for estimating effort to design and author Web applications. IEEE MultiMedia, January-March, 50--57.
[23]
Mendes, E. Mosley, N. and Counsell, S. 2003. Investigating Early Web Size Measures for Web Cost Estimation. Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. EASE 2003. Proceedings. 7th International Conference. April 2003.
[24]
Mendes, E. Mosley N., Counsell S. 2006. The Need for Web Engineering: An Introduction. In Web Engineering, E. Mendes and N. Mosley Ed. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Page(s) 1--27.
[25]
Mendes, E., Mosley, N., Counsell, S. 2006, Web Effort Estimation, Web Engineering, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2006, Page(s) 29--73
[26]
Moayed, M. J. Ghani, A. A. A. Seyedzadegan, M. 2007. Comparing Between Web Application Effort Estimation Models. Computational Science and its Applications. ICCSA 2007. International Conference on. Page(s) 153--160.
[27]
Petticrew, M. and Roberts, H. 2006. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide, Blackwell Publishing.
[28]
Reifer, D. 2000. Web Development: Estimating Quick to Market Software, Software IEEE. Volume 17, Issue 6, Nov/Dec 2000. Page(s) 57--64.
[29]
Reifer, D. 2002. Estimating Web Development Costs: There are Differences, Crosstalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, June 2002.
[30]
Ruhe, M., Jeffery, R., and Wieczorek, I. 2003. Cost estimation for Web applications, Proceedings ICSE 2003, 285--294.
[31]
Santos, D. V., Conte, T., Vilela, D. C. J., Souza, C. R. B. and Prikladnicki, R. 2012. The Influence of Human Aspects on Software Process Improvement: Qualitative Research Findings and Comparison to Previous Studies. Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. EASE 2012. Proceedings. 16th International Conference. May 2012
[32]
Seaman, C. B. 1999. Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of Software Engineering. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 25(4), 557--572.
[33]
Seaman, C. B. 2008. Qualitative Methods. In: SHULL et al. (eds.), Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering, Chapter 2, Springer, 2008
[34]
Strauss, A., and Corbin, J. 1998. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA, SAGE publications. 1998.
[35]
Umbers, P. and Miles, G. 2004. Resource estimation for Web applications. Software Metrics. Proceedings.10th International Symposium, 14--16 Sept. 2004 Page(s):370--381

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Much more than a prediction: Expert-based software effort estimation as a behavioral actEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10332-928:4Online publication date: 5-Jul-2023
  • (2022)SEXTAMTJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2021.111148185:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2022
  • (2017)Empirical Assessment of Machine Learning Models for Effort Estimation of Web-based ApplicationsProceedings of the 10th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference10.1145/3021460.3021468(74-84)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2017
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
EASE '13: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering
April 2013
268 pages
ISBN:9781450318488
DOI:10.1145/2460999
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • Centro de Informatica - UFPE: Centro de Informatica - UFPE
  • SBC: Brazilian Computer Society
  • CNPq: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecn
  • CAPES: Brazilian Higher Education Funding Council

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 April 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. grounded-theory
  2. qualitative studies
  3. web effort estimation
  4. web effort predictors
  5. web project management

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Funding Sources

Conference

EASE '13
Sponsor:
  • Centro de Informatica - UFPE
  • SBC
  • CNPq
  • CAPES

Acceptance Rates

EASE '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 31 of 94 submissions, 33%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 71 of 232 submissions, 31%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)14
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 08 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Much more than a prediction: Expert-based software effort estimation as a behavioral actEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10332-928:4Online publication date: 5-Jul-2023
  • (2022)SEXTAMTJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2021.111148185:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2022
  • (2017)Empirical Assessment of Machine Learning Models for Effort Estimation of Web-based ApplicationsProceedings of the 10th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference10.1145/3021460.3021468(74-84)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2017
  • (2016)Systematic literature review on effort estimation for Open Sources (OSS) web application development2016 Future Technologies Conference (FTC)10.1109/FTC.2016.7821748(1158-1167)Online publication date: Dec-2016
  • (2015)An Expert-Based Requirements Effort Estimation Model Using Bayesian NetworksSoftware Quality. The Future of Systems- and Software Development10.1007/978-3-319-27033-3_6(79-93)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2015
  • (2015)Web framework pointsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.171527:9(603-624)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2015
  • (2014)Is there a place for qualitative studies when identifying effort predictors?Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/2601248.2601281(1-10)Online publication date: 13-May-2014

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media