Proxy-based estimating


Proxy-Based Estimating is an estimating process used in the Personal Software Process to estimate size and effort.
Proxy Based Estimating, is the estimation method introduced by Watts Humphrey
as part of the
Personal Software Process.
PROBE is based on the idea that if an engineer is building a component similar to one he built previously, then it will take about the same effort as it did in the past.
In the PROBE method, individual engineers use a database to keep track of the size and
effort of all of the work that they do, developing a history of the effort they have put into
their past projects, broken into individual components. Each component in the database is
assigned a type and a size.
When a new project must be estimated, it is broken down into tasks that correspond
to these types and sizes. A formula based on linear regression is used to calculate
the estimate for each task.
Additional information on PROBE can be found in A Discipline for Software Engineering by Watts Humphrey.