Estimation support by lexical analysis of requirements documents

Estimation of the effort required for a software project is difficult. Vari ous means are used, but most rely on some expert assessment of the individu al requirements and their implications. A method of supporting this assessm ent for object-oriented developments is described. Lexical analysis of a dr aft requirements specification can be used to identify individual objects w hich will translate directly into the final implementation. These object co unts can then be used to provide 'first-cut' effort estimates, using histor ical information from previous projects. Experiments were conducted on a pr oblem implemented by student project teams. The results show that the untra ined domain-independent automated noun and technical term finding programs used were no worse than the typical student group in deriving problem-space objects, and that these object counts provided a reasonable indicator to t he effort required. Further work in this area is discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevi er Science Inc. All rights reserved.