Abstract

The process of finding a function that can estimate the effort of software systems is considered to be the most important and most complex process facing systems developers in the field of software engineering. The accuracy of estimating software effort forms an essential part of the software development phases. A lot of experts applied different ways to find solutions to this issue, such as the COCOMO and other methods. Recently, many questions have been put forward about the possibility of using Artificial Intelligence to solve such problems, different scientists made ​​several studies about the use of techniques such as Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks to solve estimation problems. This work utilizes one of the Linear Genetic Programming methods (Multi Expression programming) which apply the principle of competition between equations encrypted within the chromosomes to find the best formula for resolving the issue of software effort estimation. As for to the test data, benchmark known datasets are employed taken from previous projects, the results are evaluated by comparing them with the results of Genetic Programming (GP) using different fitness functions. The gained results indicate the surpassing of the employed method in finding more efficient functions for estimating about 7 datasets each consisting of many projects.