Subjetive Consistency

Abstract

An alternate effort estimation methodology is proposed to be used at mature software engineering organizations where situations of insufficient historical data or activities resilient to prediction by statistical models exist, in this scenario experts become the most used and sometime only way to perform estimations As experts enter the scene subjectiveness come into play and consistency couldn’t longer be assessed when performing estimations across similar situations or technical contexts. This paper proposes the usage of pairwise comparison methodologies not only by its own merits but also to allow the subjective factors integrated in the experts’ effort estimation to be measured, an therefore assessed in terms of its consistency The benefits of the pairwise comparison methodologies in general, and the Saaty’s Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) methodologies often associated with complex data manipulation are briefly revisited and adaptations are made to it in order to get most benefits from their usage with simple requirements in terms of the hierarchical modeling of the problem and data manipulation. Criteria are discussed to be used as quality figures and validations of the proposed methodology, in particular the usage of the Consistency Ratio (CR)A preliminary experiment is discussed and evaluated in order to validate the scope of the work and to help identify areas that are candidate to receive further attention.