Empirical evidence in early stage software effort estimation using data flow diagram

Abstract

Software effort estimation in a very early stage of the application development lifecycle is always a challenge for project managers. Many researchers have proposed different methods. They have certain advantages and limitations. This study proposed an approach called Early Effort Estimation from the data flow diagram with a complexity tag added that could estimate the effort estimation in a very early stage of the software development cycle. This method can be obtained by evaluating the customized data flow diagram, a data flow diagram with specific tag values. We also proposed a tool that implemented this method. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.