Multi criteria decision making approach for selecting effort estimation model

Abstract: Effort Estimation has always been a challenging task for the Project managers. Many researchers have tried to help them by creating different types of models. This has been already proved that none is successful for all types of projects and every type of environment. Analytic Hierarchy Process has been identified as the tool that would help in Multi Criteria Decision Making. Researchers have identified that Analytic Hierarchy Process can be used for the comparison of effort estimation of different models and techniques. But the problem with traditional Analytic Hierarchy Process is its inability to deal with the imprecision and subjectivity in the pairwise comparison process. The motive of this paper is to propose Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process, which can be used to rectify the subjectivity and imprecision of Analytic Hierarchy Process and can be used for selecting the type of Model best suited for estimating the effort for a given problem type or environment. Instead of single crisp value, Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process uses a range of values to incorporate decision maker uncertainty. From this range, decision maker can select the value that reflects his confidence and also he can specify his attitude like optimistic, pessimistic or moderate. In this work, the comparison of Analytic Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is concluded using a case study of selection of effort estimation model.