Inconsistency of expert judgment-based estimates of software development effort

Abstract

Expert judgment-based effort estimation of software development work is partly based on non-mechanical and unconscious processes. For this reason, a certain degree of intra-person inconsistency is expected, i.e., the same information presented to the same individual at different occasions sometimes lead to different effort estimates. In this paper, we report from an experiment where seven experienced software professionals estimated the same sixty software development tasks over a period of three months. Six of the sixty tasks were estimated twice. We found a high degree of inconsistency in the software professionals’ effort estimates. The mean difference of the effort estimates of the same task by the same estimator was as much as 71%. The correlation between the corresponding estimates was 0.7. Highly inconsistent effort estimates will, on average, be inaccurate and difficult to learn from. It is consequently important to focus estimation process improvement on consistency issues and thereby contribute to reduced budget-overruns, improved time-to-market, and better quality software.