Blockchain based software project information sharing and estimation system

Accurate estimations play a significant role in the success of software projects, and companies should have sufficient number of past project data to make these estimations accurate and reliable. Some institutions gather project metrics from companies to create cross-company datasets and open these datasets to companies for paid or free of charge. On the other hand, many companies do not want to make public all or part of their project information so it prevents the growth of such datasets. Blockchain technology and smart contracts, as a medium to store private information and share it with predefined constraints, might be a solution to this problem. In this study, we propose a conceptual model as a reference for blockchain-based software project information sharing, and make a proof-of-concept implementation to discuss issues related to its feasibility. Then we make an example project estimation by using the proposed model. For this purpose, some project information in International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) [1] dataset is added to the system with the hand of a sample company. Then an analogy-based estimation is made by using project information in the proposed system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use blockchain within the context of software project information sharing and estimation.