How Cognitive Psychology Can Help Analogy-Based Project Estimation

Analogical or case-based reasoning (CBR) is a knowledge management technology based upon problem-solving using episodic memory and retrieval by similarity. It has been used by software project managers in areas such as prediction and lessons learned. Results from using CBR vary from ‘extremely impressive’ to ‘weaker than benchmark’ techniques, yet it is often unclear why this should be. In this presentation we will describe how theories from cognitive psychology help us better understand expert problem solving behaviour in a specific domain (software project effort prediction). In addition, we consider the interaction of personality with preferred problem solving strategies and report on some of our empirical investigations into the cognitive processes of professionals using CBR tools to solve real problems encountered in project effort prediction. The results are leading to (i) improved understanding, and therefore utilization, of analogy-based project estimation tools (CBR) and (ii) recommendations for more effective CBR tools