Cost and Effort Estimates; Defect Prediction

Neil Ernst

nernst@uvic.ca

University of Victoria

2025-08-07

Discussion

Estimation Quotes to Affirm and Challenge

Go through the two estimation readings (COCOMO and Agile Effort…).

Find at least one quote that you agree with (AFFIRM) and one quote you wish to CHALLENGE.

Form a group with 3 other students. Discuss the two quotes you found and the reasons you chose them.

Report back to the class with the group’s two chosen quotes.

Estimation

A story point or a COCOMO output is just an estimate of what effort and cost will be required.

Ask an AI about the “no estimates” movement. What is a problem with no estimates?

Defects

• what is “JIT” defect prediction?
• when and how do we do JIT defect prediction? why do we care?
• how can we figure out what a defect-inducing change is?
• Table 5 of the JIT paper and what “change level” is - vs JS specific. What is the intuition here?
• why do we want to do “transfer learning”?
• what is “data hungry” approaches?
• what is the gist of the early vs late distinction? The “first 150 commits” - why?