Using Knowledge Management and Aggregation Techniques to Improve Web Effort Estimation

Abstract

Effort estimation is one of the main pillars of sound project management as its accuracy can affect significantly whether projects will be delivered on time and within budget. However, due to being a complex domain, there are countless examples of companies that underestimate effort, and such estimation error can be of 30%-40% on average, thus leading to serious project management problems (Jørgensen & Grimstad, 2009). The contribution of this chapter is twofold: 1) to explain the knowledge management methodology employed to build industrial expert-based Web effort estimation models, such that other companies willing to develop such models can do so and 2) to provide a wider understanding on the fundamental factors affecting Web effort estimation and their relationships via a mechanism that partially aggregates the expert-based Web effort estimation models built.