Test effort estimation for defense systems

One of the most fundamental problems in defense projects is measuring the size of the projects and cost and effort estimation. The effort estimation does not only covers the implementation effort but also testing activities. Although there are established effort estimation methods for software implementation cycle, effort for test phase is generally roughly estimated. Therefore the actual project effort gets longer than expected due to inaccurate test effort estimation.The aim of this study is to propose a new method for estimating testing effort using selected software testing metrics. These selected software testing metrics are the metrics which have been ignored in the previous software test effort estimation methods. For this purpose, 15 completed software projects of a CMMI Level-3 certified defense industry company have been analyzed. Statistical p-value was used for the selection of required metrics. Stepwise linear regression analysis is used to select necessary software testing metrics. For this purpose Minitab statistical tool was used and leave one out cross validation technique was applied to propose a method. The results of the empirical study show that the proposed method provides Pred (0,25) and Pred (0,30) are equal to 0,867. We obtained plausible results and showed that these metrics are also important in software test effort estimation of the proposed method.