Use case-based effort estimation approaches: A comparison criteria

Reliable and accurate software development effort estimation has always been a daunting task for project managers. More recently, the use of Use Cases for software effort estimation has gained wide popularity. Researchers from academia as well as industry have shown interest in the Use Case based approaches because of the promising results obtained along with their early applicability. There has been a number of approaches proposed in the literature. However, there is no framework that could be used to aid practitioners in selecting appropriate approaches suitable for their particular development efforts. In this paper we present an attribute-based framework to classify and compare these approaches and provide such aid to practitioners. The framework is also meant to guide researchers interested in proposing new use case-based approaches. The paper discusses a number of representative Use Case-based effort estimation approaches against the framework. Analysis of the discussion highlights some open issues for future research.